Marketing Confidential » Testing & Tracking

Eye Tracking Tests

John — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:57:13 +0000

One of my "secret" weapons is a website I found way back in August 2006. It's a site that offers incredibly affordable and sophisticated tracking. Crazy Egg offers a basic account at just $9.00 a month all the way up to a Pro account at $99.00 per month.

Being able to track everything that a visitor does on your site means that you can analyse is depth which items are attracting attention and which things are slowing progress through your site.

The key to any website is that it's designed to encourage the visitor to take the actions that you want them to.

The Crazy Egg tracking system enables you to accurately measure the effectiveness of your site's layout, navigation and calls to action.

My most recent tests involved the analysis of visitor behaviour on a couple of niche based blogs. I wanted to determine how to best utilise the high value real estate in the top right hand corner hot spot. You may be surprised at the results.....{+}

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Competitive Split Testing

John — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 09:25:41 +0000

Many people think that Split Testing is about increasing the sales conversion rate of your sales process.

I guess we all know how we can set up a split test of two or more pages to determine which one achieves the highest sales conversion rate.

When running any split test it's important that the results are "statiscally significant" based on the number of actions taken: Number of sales, optins, downloads, etc.

Assuming that you have X actions from your control copy, and Y actions from your test copy (where X is the better performing one).

If the difference in the number of actions (X – Y) is greater than the square root of the total number of actions (X + Y), then the difference is statistically significant.

It's generally thought that significance is achieved after 40 actions. But the above formula should be applied to be absolutely sure.

Check out "small changes : Big Profits" - it's probably the most comprehensive book available on the topic of testing and tracking.

Let's look at using split testing for competitive purposes..

First of all, have you considered evaluating a range of similar products as an affiliate?

If you want to discover which is the most profitable product to promote as an affiliate, simply set up your split test script to rotate all the competitive products, check your traffic stats with your sales and you'll see which product generates the highest revenue. As I'm sure you'll discover, the product with the highest commission isn't always the winner!

Secondly, here's one of my "secret" split testing strategies that I've never revealed before.....{+}

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Choosing The Right Theme For Wordpress

John — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 15:55:24 +0000

I have a number of niche based blogs and I've been testing a number of different layouts. The aim of my testing was to achieve an increase in Adsense revenue. As I'm sure you already know, the position and format of an Adsense advert can have a significant impact on it's effectiveness.

For the purposes of my testing I used a 336x280 Large Rectangle text advert with white background and no border.

It was not a precise test. I ran the site with a "Basic" theme for two weeks and then changed to a premium "News" type theme for the following two weeks. All traffic was from organic sources, none of the traffic was from paid sources.

Analysis of traffic sources:

Search Engines - 70.59%
Direct Traffic - 13.68%
Referring Sites - 15.73%

When changing from the Basic theme to the premium News theme there was a decrease in Adsense earnings which may not come as much of a surprise. What may surprise you in the degree of difference.....{+}

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Payment Buttons – The Test Results

John — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 13:01:01 +0000

If you've done even just a small amount of online shopping, I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that you've seen a lot of alternative payment buttons.

Some of the more common ones include the text: "Purchase Now", "Buy Now", "Add to Cart", "Download Now" and many more.

Not only is there such a wide range of alternative texts, you'll also see buttons in every colour of the rainbow! Speaking of colour, what does the colour red suggest to you? It is usually associated with danger or the need to stop, so why would you choose red for a payment button? I can tell you that red buttons are among the worst performers.

Having tested a diverse range of text and colour combinations, I can confirm that the optimum results were achieved with blue, green and grey buttons that were compatible with the design of the site. Good conversions were obtained from buttons with the text "Add to Cart", although there is another choice of text that outperformed all others.. ...{+}

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The Top 10 Converting Retail Websites – December 2008

John — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 14:45:07 +0000

Here are the top 10 converting websites for December 2008 (Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts).

These are based on Nielson Panel data and are calculated by toolbar user to final conversion. Conversion-rate data is based on visitor conversion rates, not session conversion rates: i.e., No. of unique customers/No. of unique visitors.

1. ProFlowers 31.1%
2. LL Bean 25.7%
3. Amazon 23.7%
4. VitaCost 23.0%
5. Coldwater Creek 22.4%
6. QVC 21.1%
7. Roamans 20.4%
8. Office Depot 20.2%
9. LandsEnd 19.3%
10. Victoria’s Secret 19.2%

When you look closely at all ten sites, there are a number of factors that jump out.. For example, the similarities in the layouts, the location of special offers and the positioning and style of the navigation links.

If we had access to the eye tracking charts, then I'm sure we'd see exactly why these top converting sites have such a high degree of commonality in those factors.

The Resale Rights Shuffle

John — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:52:53 +0000

I'm a big fan of products with limited Resale Rights that have a good fit with my niche markets. Just to be clear, I'm talking about non-transferable Resale Rights with less than 50 licenses. So I know that I won't have any more than 49, or less, people competing with the exact same product.

When I see suitable products with Resale Rights I like to put them into pairs. This allows me to use one product as the lead item and the second one as a unique bonus. Packaging the two complimentary products together allows me to put together a unique offer that will stand head and shoulders above my competitors.

There's a really powerful strategy that can significantly boost your profits with Resale Rights packages ...{+}

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Failed PayPal Transactions

John — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 20:34:09 +0000

I published a related post on my "John Taylor's Blog" today and included a link to my "Objection Handler" exit survey script. I decided to share a little "trick" and include a link to download the Objection Handler script free of charge with my Premium Members ...{+}

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Button It!

John — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:28:28 +0000

One of my most recent tests involved experimenting with alternative text on "Buy Now" buttons.

One thing that I strongly recommend that you do while browsing, or shopping, online is to pay attention to what other people do. You can probably bet your last dollar with absolute certainty that successful online merchants such as Amazon will have tested every single part of their sales process to determine what generates the highest sales conversion rates.

For example, I noticed recently that the vast majority of sales letter type sites use the typical "Buy Now" text on their buttons. However, the vast majority of shopping cart sites use "Add To Cart" on their call to action button. This got me thinking.. (I do a lot of that).

Anyway, back to the issue at hand..

I've tested a number of alternative calls to action including:

Buy Now
Add To Cart
Secure Your Copy
Download Immediately
Gain Immediate Access
Purchase Now
Order Now

You might be suprised at the results...{+}

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You Have To Know Your Numbers

John — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 02:35:08 +0000

Over the past couple of days, since this blog was launched, I've been carefully monitoring and tracking the number of unique visitors (A total of 559) and the conversion to Premier Member rate (2.7%). I've also been identifying the primary sources of traffic and paying attention to search terms and other factors.

I have a fairly clear plan for Marketing Confidential: By the end of 2009, my objective is to achieve a total of 1500 Premier Members.

Achieving a total of 1500 members means that I need to recruit 4 new Premier Members each day. Assuming that the conversion rate remains at 2.7%, that means that I need to attract approximately 150 unique visitors every day.

Now that I have those numbers, all I need to do is to determine which traffic tactics will consistently and efficiently generate that level of targeted traffic.

Do you know your key numbers?

Do you have clear targets and objectives for your sites?

You have to know your numbers!