4 things you should be testing

When it comes to digital marketing you know you should be testing and if you are the good little marketer that you are, you currently have a testing plan in place.
In optimization one of the most common questions asked is “what should I test?”. Well today we are going to cover the top 4 elements that we have seen move the needle more times than not across all campaigns.
Now of course there are many different factors in successful testing and successful marketing campaigns, these are simply what we have found to be beneficial and there are dozens if not hundreds of others.
1. Offer
You can have the most laser targeted traffic on the planet, but if your offer stinks people will not take action. How you present your product, the value vs price, and the benefits all play a factor in a successful campaign.
Take this campaign for an example. Monthly subscription product priced under $15. Tested different savings and elements of the offer to push people over the edge to take the product for a test drive. Dismal results. We tested doubling what they get on their first shipment, the result was subscriber count has more than doubled in just 2 months from the same traffic campaign targeting as before.
Take a hard look at what you are offering, the value you are presenting, and ways you can make it an absolutely irresistible offer. It’s definitely worth a test.
2. Headline
Yes I know, this one could seem obvious but in today’s fast paced online world with our attention being pulled in a hundred different directions, headline is vitally important.
Studies have shown that you have less than 5 seconds to grab the attention of the visitor and get them to continue. The headline is what is going to get you there.
An example of one campaign in the financial education space. We tested a particular headline that resulted in 33% more people to take their advertised trial.
This is one of the areas where you should be paying some attention as we have proven more times than not that it carries some weight. Shorter, attention grabbing, benefit driven headlines work the best.
3. Call to action
If you aren’t telling your visitors what you want them to do next, you are leaving it open to their own imagination. Don’t just assume they know what to do, even if you have a BIG FANCY next step button on the page.
If you are capturing leads as your first step, tell them to “Enter Your Email Below” or “Fill Out The Form Below” and also test listing some benefits of doing so.
Same thing when asking for a sale. Tell them to “Click The Order Button”. You can test different phrases, different benefits, and different placements of the call to action, but you need to test them.
An example was on a “free account” signup for one campaign, we tested the call to action and it yielded over a 70% improvement with just this one element change.
4. Buttons
Seems small and sort of in the box thinking, but what color and text you have on your buttons can make a big difference. If you look at your landing pages, do your buttons blend in? If so you may want to test the color of the buttons to stand out a bit more from the rest of the page.
Colors to test are red, blue, yellow, green, orange. As far as text, you are only limited to your imagination… test things like… Get My Account, Sign Up Now, Continue, Free Instant Access, Get Access Now, just to name a few.
Even the smallest change could mean the world of different in your conversions, so make sure you are testing them.
Like I said earlier there are dozens if not hundreds of other elements to look at and test, sometimes a complete re-design is what is needed to kick up the conversions, other times the small incremental changes like the ones listed above make the difference.
Take a look at your visitor data to find the problem areas and test those as well. But these elements should get a second and third look.