Automated Split Testing

Landing Page Optimization With AB Split Testing

March 15th, 2011

Optimizing your landing pages is important no matter what type of niche market you’re in. A great landing page will allow you to gain a competitive advantage even if you have a limited advertising budget But what is landing page optimization and how do you go about doing it?

Firstly, a landing page as you may already know is a page that you drive traffic to. In some cases, a landing page is also known as a sales page or an optin page. However, the basic purpose for any landing page no matter what its called is to get conversions.

When you have your landing pages setup, you need to go out and get traffic. You may have heard that traffic is lifeblood of any affiliate marketing business. The more traffic you get, the more money you make. Although that is true, there’s only that much traffic you can get with a limited budget and time.

The real lifeblood of an affiliate marketing business is conversions. If you can convert your traffic to sales more efficiently than others, you’ll be the dominant player in your niche market within a short period of time. As far as optimization goes, there are basically two kinds of tests you can do on your landing pages.

Multivariate Testing for Landing Page Optimization

Hardcore conversion experts preach about Multivariate Testing or MVT. In a multivariate test, you test a combination or different elements on a single page. It’s the fastest way to improve your conversion rates, but it has two flaws.

The first flaw is that you need to get loads of traffic for MVT. If you cannot get a few thousand impressions per day, then it will take forever. As a matter of fact, MVT just doesn’t work well for low-traffic websites and landing pages.

The second flaw is its complexity. If you really want to do MVT, you need to study MVT. You need to be able to develop effective test cases and elements. You also need to be pretty good at interpreting results. There’s a tendency for low-traffic site owners to accept variations that are not yet proven to work. That’s when MVT backfires and actually drags you landing page conversion rates down.

AB Split Testing for Landing Page Optimization

AB split testing on the other hand is much more simple. You start with web page A (the control) and web page B as a test page. Both web pages are identical except for the single variable you want to test. For example, both pages may be identical except for the main headline, or the signup link.

Once you’ve setup your simple AB test, you split your traffic between the two pages and observe your sales or leads. After both pages have achieved a reasonable number of conversions, you’ll be able to see the winning page. The losing page is removed and replaced with another contender.

You repeat this process with different layouts, different ad copy, and different headlines until you find the best possible landing page. You’ll know you’ve found it when your AB split test results no longer show any significant difference between pages no matter how much you test.

Can you test more than two pages at a time? Of course you can, but keep in mind that the more pages you add to the AB test, the longer it will take for you to get any kind of meaningful result. That’s why I recommend that you test no more than three pages at a time.

With AB split testing, landing page optimization gets much simpler and faster. You can get really meaningful results with only a small number of website visitors, and get higher conversion rates consistently. You don’t need much technical knowledge either.

Pitfalls of Landing Page Optimization

Although the benefits of optimizing your landing pages are immense, there are several pitfalls to avoid. The first is inconsistency. Make sure all other aspects of your landing page remains the same when you’re doing your tests. Do not change your landing page designs, your source of traffic or other elements when testing a page. Doing so will only give you skewed, inaccurate results.

The other pitfall to avoid is redundancy. Keep track of the elements you have already tested. Avoid repeating tests that you have already done before. It’s very easy to be running around in circles instead of moving forward.

The final pitfall in landing page optimization is ineffective software. Don’t spend a lot of time setting up, upgrading or troubleshooting your software. Instead, you should redirect your effort and time to the content and sales process of your landing pages. If you have to constantly upgrade or troubleshoot the software you’re using for landing page optimization, you’re really not doing your business any help.

Gobala Krishnan is an avid affiliate marketer and the founder of LinkTrackr, a split testing and landing page optimization software. Signup for a free account today to put your affiliate marketing business on overdrive.
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Landing Page Optimization With AB Split Testing