You can track things down into so much detail that literally… marketing should become an ongoing scientific experiment where you’re always on the quest to improve the results from the leads you’re ALREADY getting.

Let me emphasize there…

… LEADS YOU’RE ALREADY GETTING

Too many people are focusing all of their efforts on just getting more traffic, more leads, more new bodies… which is HUGE and one of the most important things you can do.

But, what if you could get 31.1% of those same people to act on the offer you worked hard to put in front of them?

Well, that would mean…

• You can spend more on advertising to get more clients because you’re making more per lead
• You can work less and make more money with the same traffic you’re already getting

Essentially… it’s like you’re a world class athlete who has trained and honed your body… then to shave those extra 2 tenths of a second off of your 100m dash… you slightly tweak the position of your right hand on your backstroke… you get results… you’re not working harder but you’re yielding better results from the same efforts you were already doing.

So, if you agree that it’s a cool thing to make a small tweak that’ll give you 31.1% better results… lets dive into this months split test report.

Increasing The Conversion Rate Of An Online Squeeze (Lead Generation) Page by 31%

Test Question: Will adding bullet points below a video on an opt in page increase or decrease conversions?

More Info: We emulated an effective squeeze page that other people were using in other markets that was the simple video with arrow and opt in box design you’ll see below as the “control”.  We wanted to see if by adding bullet points clarifying the offer if we would see a bump in the conversion rate of the squeeze page.

Original Version Of The Squeeze: The One without bullets (that others said was the best)

Here's the original version without bullets

(click to enlarge)

Squeeze Page Variation Version: The One w/ the Bullet Points Below The Video

Here's the "variation" version w/ the bullet points

(click to enlarge)

As you can see, those two pages are exactly the same… the only difference is that short set of bullet points below the video that give some information about what they’ll get after they enter in their name and email.

Tools Used: (for this specific test)

• Google Website Optimizer (free)
• Dreamweaver for the html editing (not free)
• Aweber for our email autoresponder (best I’ve ever used)
• Hostgator for our web hosting (again, best hosting out there)

Now, The Split Test Results – 31.1% Improvement

So, we actually started this test way back in 2009 as you can see… and this page currently isn’t our main lead generation page (I’ll share those with you later)… but we’re still using these test results on our other pages and seeing similar results.

On the screenshot from our Google Analytics account below you’ll notice a few things:

1. The pages converted upwards of 51% at their peak the month we rolled that page out (why? I’ll tell you why in a later post on why freshness matters) but steadily declined since then.
2. The variation we tested against the original always outperformed the original (without bullet points) from the start… which was cool
3. This test has been run on over 20,000 visitors… and resulted in just under 4,000 opt ins to this specific page… and from all of that the page with the bullet points outperformed the one without the bullets below the video every step of the way for a 31.1% improvement on opt ins.

Screenshot from my google analytics account

So, if people say that split testing doesn’t matter… with numbers like this… if we would have stuck with the original version of the page that everyone said was the best converting for their offers… we would have missed out on 450 opt ins… and if each opt in is worth $20 to us over their life… that is $9,000 in lost revenue that we would have just flushed down the drain.

That’s not a huge amount of money… but enough to spend the 30 minutes it took to hop into Google Analytics Website Optimizer to whip up that test.

Why Adding Bullets Increased Opt In Results 31%

I can write a ton of guesses and conjecture on why I think bullet points for this specific page upped the opt in rate by 31%… but in the end… people are curious by nature… but even more… people like to walk up to glass doors more than they like to walk up to solid steel doors.

What I mean is, we like to get a glimpse of whats behind the door before we knock on it and walk in… we don’t like the unknown.

So, by adding the 4 bullet points walking visitors of the page through what they were about to get… people felt more comfortable… and took that next step.

Question: If you were heading to lunch and there were two identical burger joints next to eachother… you didn’t know a thing about either one.  One burger joint had glass windows and a glass door… you could see inside and got a glimpse of what was inside.  You could see people… you could see the menu.. the whole shibang.

Then, next door… they had a brick wall and solid wood door. How would you feel?  You’d run straight to the glass door burger joint and never look back.

So, find ways in your marketing, on your lead generation pages, your sales pages, etc… to give your visitors a preview with bullet points, pictures, etc. of what they’re about to get. It’ll surely start increasing your online conversion rates a TON.

Just give ‘er a try and report back

To Sum It Up

This test was one of the simpler ones… but got great results and has likely resulted in over 5,000 extra opt ins for our company in the past year on other pages as well.

So, what you should to this week is write down 1 page that you currently have traffic going to (whether its 2 visitors a day or 200) and test 1 element on that page.  If its a squeeze page… try changing the copy up a bit or adding some bullet points to give the visitor a better glimpse of what they’re about to get.  If you have a video that doesn’t have bullet points below it… try throwing 3 or 4 bullet points below the video that talk about the specific benefits they’ll get when they opt in.

This is the first of many Online Conversion Rate Booster write ups I’ll do based on the tests we’re currently running in our online publishing companies.

So, what tests have you tried recently that worked awesome or just plain failed epicly?  Lemme know in the comments box below!

- Trevor

I’ll keep shooting a new video every now and then walking through some “ninja” things we’re doing in our business to Automate, Systemize, and Optimize the business (and our lifestyles) with easy little changes in places you may not even be looking.

Let me know what you think about this little tip

Question, what do people see on your site when they unsubscribe from your email newsletter list?

Do you never see them again and send them off into the abyss?

Or…

Do you get them to boomerang right back to ya by making them remember why you’re a cool company to do biz with?

If you’re like most people (myself included until I saw what I’m going to show you)… they see a message that basically tells them that they’re unsubscribed… nothing else.

You don’t… try to give them more value

You don’t… try to get them to re-think their decision and re-subscribe

You don’t… leave them with a good positive impression of your company or brand? (do ya?)

Good.  Now, here’s something I saw the other day that engaged the heck out of me AFTER I decided I didn’t want to get emails from Groupon anymore (I like Groupon a lot actually, I just live in a town that is too small to have Groupon deals so it didn’t do me much good).

So, How Do You Use Your Email Unsubscribe Page To Your Advantage?

Okay, a quick little marketing and conversion tid-bit to test that you can implement in 10 minutes and it…

• Gets people who just unsubscribed from your email newsletter to really *think* about re-subscribing
• Builds personality and a sense of fun with the prospect (i.e. – getting them to want to stay to be a part of the fun)
• Even if they don’t resubscribe you’ve left them with a memorable snapshot of your brand

All cool stuff right?

Well, the other day I unsubscribed from Groupon and saw this…

Now, the cool (and fun part) of this page is what happens after you click the “punish Derrick” button.  Hit the link below to check ‘er out

Check it out on their site <<

Now…

… this is another article I’ll work up soon… but this is a major pattern interrupt (there’s a good post on pattern interrupts, I’ll write one over here sometime soon).  Basically, you’re expecting something (a normal plain and boring unsubscribe page) and you get something totally different (a funny and interactive unsubscribe page that tries to woo you back into their company).  Any time you can interrupt the “pattern” that is going on in your prospect/customers head (of what they’re used to seeing in similar situations)… you’re going to stand out and get some pretty cool results.

So…

How can you get creative with moving people from “I don’t want” to “you guys are awesome and I’ll hang on a bit longer!”?

We’re implementing it on a site of ours now as a test and I’ll let you know the results.

How can you implement it? Lemme know

When my wife and I bought our house at the end of 2008 here in Roseburg, we moved in and the yard was green as green can be.  It was so damn green in fact that I though “hey, this will be easy to keep the yard work up!”.

Over the next year I watered the lawn religiously…

Fertilized it with the “best money can buy” (according to the commercials anyway, because as a marketer I believe all commercials …

… you know the gig.

Lawns are easy to keep up right?

I Did Everything Right… And My Lawn Turned Brown

So, fast forward to 2010.  That lush green… Irish country-side like yard that helped sell me on buying the house in the first place was now…

… thin

… browning in spots

… bug filled

… and drank water like a fish but never got any greener

Again, I was doing all of the right things.

• I watered more than enough
• I fertilized just like the trusty Scotts Turf-Builder bag told me to
• And I even thought about just hiring someone to come in and make my lawn green just like all of the neighbors

All the right things… and the results sucked.

What Do You Do When You’re Doing All Of The Right Things?

Ha, yes… this does have everything to do with business (and if your lawn sucks it’ll have a tip for ya to try out .

When you’re doing all of the right things… you need to start to look at your ingredients.

In this case…

• Water – The water was the same water the previous owners used.  I’m pretty sure they didn’t fly in some pristine Chilean mountain spring water or anything. And I was watering 4-5 times a week some weeks just to make for damn sure the lawn got enough water.  So, I ruled the water out.
• Maintenance – I mowed weekly, and that spring I aerated and de-thatched the lawn. So, maintenance… check.
• Fertilizer – This is really the main variable that I didn’t know what the previous owners used.  But, I was doing what Mr. Scott told me to do. And the lawn still looked like a little league field in late August after 800 games have been played on it.

So, to make a long metaphor short… I tried a different fertilizer to help my lawn grow.

This time it was a 16-16-16 blend.

Same Techniques. Different Fertilizer.

So, I took that big ‘ol sack of triple 16 and fertilized the heck out of the lawn.

Results?…

The lawn is now green, lush, less maintenance, takes less water, and ready for our 7 month old girl to play on it this summer.

Have You Tried Changing Your Fertilizer?

Just like with your lawn… there are a ton of different options on things to help you grow your business.

Heck, here are just a few…

• Email marketing
• Customer loyalty programs
• Direct mail marketing
• Social media
• Person to person sales
• Pay per click
• Media buying
• Joint ventures
• Focusing on the *right* parts of your business
• … there’s a bagillion more.

If your business isn’t growing as fast as you’d like or just is falling flat… make sure your business is of course isn’t killing itself from the inside out from bad people on the bus, poor systems, poor products, etc… but then look at the ways you’re relying on to feed the growth of your business.

If the “fertilizer” (marketing)  you’re pouring on your business isn’t producing the green you want… try something else.

Sticking with the wrong fertilizer almost killed my lawn.  Sticking with the wrong marketing can kill your business.

Here in the next month or two I’ll be diving into some of the “fertilizer” we’re using in my companies to grow with no extra effort.

So that way you can pick and choose things to test and see what works best to put the most green in your pocket (while at the same time giving your customers and partners an awesome place to frolic around on

Well…. that happened this week.

Here’s the story…

On Monday I was fiddling around in my FTP client (which I should leave up to my web guys)… and somehow deleted the entire directory that my personal blog is in.

Yep, sucks.

What sucks even more was I thought the site was being backed up…. twice… when in actuality it was being backed up… never.  (ya, I had a convo w/ my hosting company and web peeps about that one).

So, I panicked for 14 seconds…

… then realized this is a good time to have a fresh start on the blog. It needed it

Where I’m going from here….

I had about 40 posts on my “old” blog and got some okay traffic from it. But, I wasn’t really passionate about what I had wrote anymore and frankly hadn’t posted a new thought provoking post in over a year. I’ve been so darn busy building my companies… I’ve neglected building my own personal brand.

So, over the next few weeks we’ll be bringing this blog back to life… and I’m going to have fun with it this time

Check back here in a couple weeks… and lets have an awesome 2011 together!

- Trevor

PS- Lesson learned. If you’re not doing double and triple backups of your servers… do it now. I’ll show you in a post what we’re using now to have triple redundancy in our backups.  Funny how it takes something like this to make you protect things right?