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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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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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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My boss and mentor, Roland Hockney, was the Manufacturing Director and he taught me a number of very important lessons. One of those lessons was to pay attention to what was important through measurement.

My performance was judged on a number of factors, or Key Performance Indicators (KPI's).

I made damned sure I had all the up to date numbers at hand at all times because I could guarantee that Roland's questions would always be about the stuff that I should be paying attention to. Yes, I was accountable for meeting profit targets, quality standards, keeping costs within budget and all the usual financial measurements. But Roland also made sure that I was also aware of health and safety, absenteeism, discipline and grievance statistics because he knew that they were an excellent indicator of morale.

The real lesson for me was that I was totally focused on the things that really mattered to the business. I paid attention to the things that I knew were measured and I had very clear objectives and priorities.

Roland was a great boss and mentor and I owe much of my success today to what he taught me over 30 years ago; because I continue to measure what's important.

Let me share with you the Key Performance Indicators that I pay attention to.....{+}

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First of all I took the first two chapters of the report and created a short 5 page guide which was packed with really useful tips and information.

I then modified the sales page by splitting it into two sections. At the end of the first section I offered the reader the first two chapters as a "Free, Try Before You Buy Trial" in exchange for their email address. The two free chapters were delivered as a link in an email after the reader had confirmed their subscription.

After confirming their subscription, the reader was redirected to the second section of the sales copy where I emphasized the benefits, provided testimonials as social proof, offered a "No Questions Asked" guarantee and closed the sale.

At the end of the guide containing the first two chapters there was also a link to section two of the sales letter. So that anyone who abandoned the sales letter to read the free content was encouraged to buy the full report.

I also put together a series of 17 short autoresponder messages, each containing a gardening tip which related to the report and provided a link back to the second section of the sales copy.

This approach was very successful and the sales conversion rate jumped from 2.3% to 3.4%.

I was then able to increase my overall profits by even more with one additional change...{+}

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Firstly, I recommend that you start your traffic planning by establishing your target annual income. Knowing how much you want to make by the end of the year not only gives you something to aim for, it also gives you the ability to work backwards.

Let's start with an example by setting a target income of $100,000 for the coming year.

If we know the average income from a single sale, we can calculate the number of sales that we need to make during the year. So, let's assume that a mixture of affiliate income and sales of our own products generates an average income per sale of $20.

That means that we need to make 5,000 sales per year, around 100 sales every week or approximately 14 sales every day.

The typical sales conversion rate is 2% and that means that if we want to achieve 14 sales, we need to drive 700 unique visitors to our sales page(s) every day.

Obviously, I haven't taken account of any overheads, advertising or promotion costs. My point is simply to encourage you to break your annual objectives down into management daily targets.

When you know that you need 700 unique visitors every day, you can determine where to go to source that traffic.

You can establish a routine of daily traffic building actions that will get you the volume of visitors you need. The real key is testing and tracking everything you do so that you can invest your efforts in what really works and cut down on, or eliminate, the activites that give you the least return on your efforts.