All small businesses want to do well, whether their store is brick and mortar or on the Web. It’s almost vital that you have an online presence these days, so more and more brick and mortar businesses are coming online. So, they put up a website or e-commerce store and though they’re working to drive traffic, they’re unhappy with conversion.
Conversion is the most important aspect of your business, and you need to pay attention to it!
No matter how many people come to your site, no matter what they click on, if they aren’t buying, your conversion is dismal.
One way to help your conversions is by split testing or A/B testing. This means you run one version of your page vs. another, with only ONE element different, such as your headline, your sub-head, your deck copy, your image, your layout, or your bullet points.
You can do this in Google Analytics, under “Content” and then, “Experiments.” You’ll need to set up two pages to use this option. Everything element on page two will be identical to page one, except that ONE element you want to test. And you’ll need to apply Google’s code to your pages. It’s really just a matter of cut and paste, so it’s not difficult, but if you need a webmaster, he or she can do this for you.
Another kind of testing works faster, and it’s called “Taguchi ” or “Multi-Variate” testing. This requires a software that will test several variables on your site all at the same time — your headline, your sub-head, your deck copy, your image, AND your bullet points. You can do this in Google, too. It’s just a little more complicated with more pages.
But regardless of how you do it, testing is imperative! Otherwise, you could be slogging along with a page that’s not working at all for your business, and if it’s not working, you’re in trouble.
Try A/B testing first to get the hang of it. It’s really easy to do and with Google Analytics; it’s also free. Run your test until you get statistical significance, and Google will tell you when that’s reached. They will also stop the test after thirty days, if you’re not getting much traffic, so you need to be sending traffic to your site when you use this method, too.
SEO is one way to get traffic, but there are many, many other ways. Traffic is important, but without conversions, what do all the visitors in the universe matter?
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