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If there’s a practice that can change the fortunes of your business, would you indulge in it?

I know you will, as most people will. But what am I talking about?

I’m talking about the fact that there is never a perfect part of any business. No matter how good the business may be.

Which leads to a constant need for every business to test.

Test what?

Everything.

For a business, testing is as vital when you achieve your target as when you fail. This is because no matter the current state of your business, you must continue to find every opportunity to improve.

Or else it will stagnate, get run over by the competition, and die. One thing I’m sure of though, is that you’re not reading this post just for us to talk about your business dying.

But what is testing all about?

Testing is usually an experiment taken to change a part of your business and note the results compared to your present results. This is in a bid to improve your processes and results.

Testing doesn’t always lead to positive results, but it’s always valuable. Two of the most important things testing will tell you is that:

• • • A current part of your operation should be changed if testing leads to positive results.
  • A current part of your operation should remain if testing leads to negative results.

Since testing is such a wide topic, it’ll probably require a book to do justice to it. Therefore, I’m going to restrict this post to testing as it relates to important parts of your business website operations.

A/B Testing on your business website

Today, it’s vital for any business to have a website. And most businesses do that. But they only stop there. Which makes the whole effort useless.

Your business should have a website. And even more, you must design and operate it to get leads for your business.

Likewise, there must be an effective sales funnel that converts these leads to customers. In other words, your website is an avenue to gain customers just like your offline business. In fact, it can be more effective in some cases.

When you decide to perform A/B tests on your website, there are some best practices that lead to the best results possible.

Have a way to measure results: if you can’t measure accurate results from your experiments, then testing is just a waste of time. Because accurate results help you to know if your test has been successful or otherwise.

Know your present performance: the ultimate aim of testing is to improve on your current results.

At the end of your tests, you want to compare your test results to your initial results before the test. Knowing your current performance gives you a benchmark to judge against.

Change a single element: to track your results effectively, it’s important that you test only a single element of your website at a particular time.

For instance, if you change the headline, images, and call to actions of a post at the same time, you can’t pinpoint what caused an increase or decrease in traffic.

Give it time: allowing your test to run for a period of time will increase the integrity of your results. Although there is no specified period of time for a test, it should take as long as possible.

This will also depend on the amount of traffic to the page you’re testing. A page with a high traffic can be tested for a shorter period of time than one with low traffic.

What are the most important parts of your website to perform A/B split tests?

1. Content

This is one of the most important parts of your website. In fact, without content, a website is as good as useless. Now when you have content on your website, there is a reason.

Many times, effective content could perform some of these functions for readers:

• • To educate about a topic

• • To promote a product

• • To announce a promo or an offer

• • To capture leads

• • • To convert leads to customers
  • To run email campaigns

There are more uses for content and it’s important to any part of your website.

It must also be noted that content is not only about written words. Your website can produce content in various other formats. Some popular options today are:

• • Images

• • Infographics

• • Videos

• • • Podcasts
  • Webinars

However, you don’t stop after producing content. You also have to ask a critical question. You’re probably thinking what question?

Is your content achieving the goals you set?

The goal for your content depends on its aim.

If your content is to educate, is it achieving its aim?

If it’s to convert leads, how many is it converting compared to traffic to the page?

How many leads is your content converting to customers through your email campaigns?

Of course, you need a structure to measure these metrics effectively to improve the accuracy of your conclusions

Whether your content achieves its goals or not, there’s still a need to test. Because no matter the result you get, you want to improve upon it.

What are the elements of your content you should test to improve upon its effectiveness?

Headline

You want to get more people to read your post? There are few better things you can do than improve your headline.

Because this is the first part of your post readers will see. This is the first thing that tells them if your post is worth a read or not.

According to Copyblogger’s Brian Clark, the main function of your headline is to get visitors to read the first sentence of your post.

Usually, there are basic things that must be present in your headlines.

• • It must be clear about the content of your post

• • • It must invoke curiosity
  • It must preach benefits

However, there’s no specific headline template that works for everyone. Some experts recommend short headlines.

This is not a set rule though. You’ll see many long headlines that still manage to pull in a lot of people. It’s important to know what works for your website audience.

There are many popular headline templates you can use for your content. Some of them are:

• • Listicles

• • • How tos
  • Declarative

You need to test to know what’s best for your audience.

What are the two major things to test for in your headline?

• • • Its length
  • Its content

If you currently use long headlines, you could perform a test by using short ones on selected posts and track the results for a period of time.

One other part you have to look at is the content. Is your headline emotional? CoSchedule analyzed 1 million headlines and found that headlines with higher emotional content had more shares.

Another thing to check is the style. Is your headline too formal? Will your audience like something informal better?

Posting frequency

Some blogs post daily, some 3 times in a week, some weekly, and some monthly. HubSpot found that companies that published more than 16 blog posts per month got 4.5 times more leads than those that publish between 0 and 4 monthly.

However, not everyone will be able to post daily on their website. But if increasing your posting frequency from let’s say twice in a week to thrice will increase your leads, will you try it?

If you’re like most people, you will. It’s worth a try to increase the frequency of your post and see its effect on traffic and number of leads.

It’s important to note that the quality of your posts should stay the same even when you increase their frequency.

In another sense, you can reduce the frequency of your posts if you think you’re posting too frequently. There are websites that post once in a week and still get a huge amount of traffic.

In a move that went against conventional wisdom, Ahrefs deleted 266 of their 541 blog posts. These posts had an average of 700 words and were contributing little to the blog traffic.

They also reduced their posting frequency but instead focused on creating long and quality content. This led to an 88.98% increase in organic traffic.

Posting time

What days and time do you post? Do you prefer posting during weekdays or weekends?

Many factors could determine how your posting time affect engagement. If your audience is majorly executives, they may be unable to read your post on weekdays.

But if you offer a product they need for their business, they may be more likely to check during weekdays when they’re performing research.

Posting time depends on the audience you have. To get the best time possible, you need to test these variables:

• • • Time of the day
  • Day of the week

If your tests yield a positive result like more traffic or leads, then you have a reasonable case to change your posting time.

Content length

How long should your content be? It depends.

If you’re looking to rank your content on Google’s first page for important keywords in your industry, then long posts will be more suitable.

According to SerpIQ, a post in Google first page results has an average of over 2,000 words with the number one result having an average of 2,450 words.

In another analysis of 1 million search results by Backlinko, they found that the number of words in a post is correlated to its position on the Google search results page. They also found that the number 1 result had an average of 1,890 words.

Apart from better search rankings, longer posts tend to have more backlinks compared to shorter ones. They also have more social shares.

When Buzzsumo and Moz conducted a study into the number of shares and links of 1 million articles, they found that longer posts got more shares and referring domain links.

However, not every website needs long content. Some niches work well with short content and that’s what their audience expects.

For instance, no one wants to read 2,500 words just to learn about Kanye West’s latest Twitter rant. A short post covers this effectively in an entertainment or gossip site.

If you currently write 750-word posts for your website, you may incorporate more content in the 1,500 to 2,000 words range. You may write these posts on similar topics just to make your test as accurate as possible.

When you perform these tests, you’ll look out for the number of shares for these longer posts. To track backlinks and search rank, this may take months to get accurate results.

You can mix your content length over months and take your decision when you see the results.

Buffer found that their audience connected better with their long-form posts. They published more of this type of content and also used the best headline possible. This led to over 1.5 million visits to the blog.

Content type

The most popular type of content is the written content. And most times when people talk about content, they refer to the written type.

However, there are other types of content that you can publish for your audience as I’ve stated earlier.

Infographics: this explains your post in a simple form combining images and words. For people who don’t have the patience to read your 2,000-word post, they can get all the important points in your post through an infographic.

According to OneSpot, infographics can increase a website’s traffic by 12% and 40% of people respond better to visual info than plain text.

By posting 47 infographics in 2 years, KISSmetrics got 2,512,596 visitors to its website. They also got 41,142 backlinks from 3,741 unique domains.

Videos: for topics like tutorials or DIY posts, you can use videos to show viewers the steps. They can watch videos and take the steps as you do so.

Aberdeen Group reports that video marketers get 66% more qualified leads per year and 54% increase in brand awareness than those who don’t use video.

Podcasts: this is an audio version of your post. Many times people listen to podcasts during exercises or even while driving. This means they can consume your content without having to sit down to read for 10 minutes.

For an influencer like Pat Flynn, his podcast Smart Passive Income is probably his most popular content type.

Webinars: these are seminars on the web. There are both free and paid webinars. Although it’s also in the video format, the advantage it has over a video is that you can have an interactive session where participants ask questions and you supply them answers.

You can also release your webinar as a video for people who missed the event.

Implement these content types and track the changes in your traffic and leads generation.

Call to action

For every piece of content you have on your website, there must be an action that your readers should take. You’ll have to communicate this action to your readers.

This gives them the next direction after your post. Your call to action will depend on the aim of your post.

For instance, if you want more engagement for your post, you may ask readers to drop their thoughts and questions in the comments. It may also be to share your posts on social media.

If you want your post to capture leads, you may link a call to action to your landing page or a lead capture form.

Your call to action may lead to your sales page if you’re talking about how to solve a problem with your product.

You can change your call to action words to see what results you get.

Images

To break the text of your content effectively for easier reading, you need to include images. These images can also consolidate your content’s message.

Research shows that 65% of the population are visual learners and posts with visuals have 94% more page visits and engagement than those without.

There are mainly two options to test images within your content:

• • • Type of image
  • Number of images

For some niches, stock images may be enough in your post. But for others, you may need to show charts, screenshots, etc. to support your message.

If you don’t currently use images in your post, you should perform tests with posts that include images. Using too few images may also be bad for user experience on your website.

There’s no fast rule with the number of images, but you should try to use about 3 within 1,000 words. For a tutorial though, you’ll need more pictures.

2. Landing Pages

The main aim of a landing page is to capture leads or get visitors to buy your product or service. Everything done on a landing page is geared towards conversion.

A website can have as many landing pages as possible. According to HubSpot, when companies increase the number of landing pages on their website from 10 to 15, they see a 55% increase in leads acquisition.

Having said that, one thing you really want your landing pages to be doing is to be converting leads or sales. For your landing page to convert leads, you need to present an offer to your visitors.

What are you going to give them in return for their email address? Is it an ebook? Or a discount on your product? Or exclusive content?

What are the elements of a landing page that can be tested to improve its performance?

Headline

When a visitor gets to your landing page, the first thing they see is your headline. The first rule of your headline is that it must give a clear indication of what visitors would encounter on the page.

I have given more details about headlines earlier in the post. You can test different variations of your headlines to see how it affects the performance of your page.

In some cases, changing the headline of your landing page could increase the traffic to that page. But you should focus majorly on the conversion rate and the number of leads generated.

To improve the conversion rate of their landing page, Wilson HTM, an investment group, tested two variations of their landing page headline. This is the control:

And the second variation that had the best result:

The second variation had a 52.8% better conversion than the control.

Page Copy

The written content is the major way to convince your visitor that your offer is worth their email address. If your page copy fails to make your points, you usually lose a potential lead.

Some things to test about your page copy are:

Length: you need to test the number of words on your landing page to see what works best for you. Some copywriters advocate long copy for landing pages.

By increasing the length of their landing page and other elements, SEOmoz got a 52% increase in conversion of the page.

But short still works for some. You should test and see what works for your business.

Style: do you have a copy that uses an informal style of writing? What if you use a formal language? This could also be dependent on your audience but it’s always worth a try.

Background

The background of your landing page matters. Do you currently have a plain background? Do you use an image as your landing page background?

There are 3 common tests you can perform regarding your landing page background.

Add an image: If you have a plain background on your landing page, you can add an image as the background and track its performance.

Change image: you can change the current image if you already use one and see the difference in performance.

Remove image: if you currently use an image as your background, you can also try removing it to see the effect it has on your landing page conversions.

Content type

Your landing page doesn’t have to be written content alone. You can have a video landing page for example.

But apart from that, you can include images or video within your written content.

Video: You can add a video to your landing page. This is especially important if your offer is a discount or related to your product. With the addition of a video to their landing page, TutorVista.com, an online tutoring company, increased their conversions by 86%.

Images: this could make your content easier to consume. You can try adding an image to your landing page. If you already have one, you can change it and watch the effects.

Call to actions

Your call to action is one of the most important elements of your landing page. Because this is what prompts your visitor to release their precious information.

The unwritten rule is that your call to action should be relevant to your landing page offer. For instance, ‘send me updates’ is an irrelevant call to action if your offer is an ebook.

In this case, ‘Get my ebook’ or ‘Send me the ebook’ would have been more appropriate. Your call to action could be a part of your written content or the words on the dedicated call to action button.

Nevertheless, there are many call to actions you can use for the same offer. You should try as many as you can and watch the results.

GoCardless decided to test between two call to actions “Request a demo” and “Watch a demo” on their landing page.

They found that “Watch a demo” had a 139% increase in conversion compared to “Request a demo.”

Navigation bars

A best practice for landing pages is to remove all distractions for your visitor. Your main aim is to convert leads.

Your navigation bar could lead them to other pages on your website. This means your landing page has failed to perform its function successfully. Despite this, only 16% of landing pages are without navigation bars.

If you have a navigation bar on your landing page, you should remove it and see if it leads to an improvement in conversion.

With the removal of navigation bar, Yuppiechef increased signups by 100%.

Lead form fields

This is the form that captures your lead’s information. Though it may sound unfair, it’s possible for your visitor to get to this stage and decide to leave your page.

This could be due to many factors. And these are the factors you must test regularly for optimum conversion. What are these factors?

Number of form fields: having a high number of form fields could reduce the conversion rate of your landing page. Formstack found that fewer form fields can lead to higher conversions.

After researching 40,000 contact forms, Dan Zarrella of HubSpot found that conversion rate increases by 50% when form fields are reduced from 4 to 3.

However, your landing page is not always about the number of leads converted.

Sometimes, it’s about the number of marketing qualified leads who are easier to convert to sales qualified leads and customers.

Some businesses increase their number of form fields because they have a higher confidence that a lead who takes time to fill the form is interested in their product.

You can either reduce or increase the number of your form fields depending on whether you want more leads or fewer but more qualified leads.

Flying Scot Parking, a Glasgow Airport parking resource, decided to perform a test on the number of form fields on its landing page.

They reduced the number of form fields. In this case study, they found that fewer form fields led to 35% more form submissions.

Call to action button: the call to action button on your page or form should be tested. Things you can change mainly are the color or the text of the call to action button.

Another thing to test is whether you have your form on your page or it pops up when a visitors click a call to action button on your landing page.

3. Sales Pages

If you sell products on your website, or you run an ecommerce website, your sales page is your most important website page. It’s also a landing page, but the aim of this page is to sell and not capture leads like a traditional landing page.

You must test every element possible on this page. Because any visitor you lose at this page is probably money lost.

What are the important elements to test on your sales page?

Headline

The headline of your sales page should give a clear message about the product on the page. At this point in the sales process, there’s no need to provoke curiosity. Potential customers have to know what they’re paying for.

You can test two headline variations of your sales page and track their conversions.

With a headline test by Movexa, they were able to increase sales by 89.97% for their supplement. The more successful headline removed the confusion about the product by adding the word “supplement.”

Length of copy

You should also test the number of words on your sales page. Does your audience require less talk about the product or do they need more convincing?

You need to test the length and see what converts better. By testing a long and short version of their sales page, Crazy Egg found that the sales page with the long copy outperformed the short copy by 30%.

Placement of trust badges

For many sales pages, there are trust badges that show the reliability of a business. This helps to increase potential customers’ trust and reduce their reluctance in doing business.

You can test the presence of the badges and see how it affects conversions. You can also test its placement on different areas of the page to see the performance.

When White Card Courses added trust badges above the fold, they had a 32% increase in conversions.

Conclusion

Testing is a process that never ends on your business website. To continue to improve the results you get on your website, one activity you must always indulge in is testing.

This post has highlighted some important elements you need to test on your website. But this is not an exhaustive list and you can test anything possible on your website.

To get the best out of testing, you need to observe your website and note the elements you think can have effects on your visitors if modified.

Have you started performing tests on your website? Have you seen improvement in conversions after the tests? Tell me about your experience in the comments!