Split Testing Demystified: How to Get More Leads by Boosting Your Conversion Rates

Conversion optimization is a topic marketers can build an entire career around. You can never know it all.

Unfortunately, this results in many business owners thinking it’s like voodoo … one of those mysterious marketing methods that mere mortals cannot comprehend, so they don’t even try.

Psh. Getting better conversion rates on your website, funnel, and emails is simply a number’s game. And when you understand the basics of split testing, you’ll realize the magic behind conversion rate optimization is less mysterious than the gurus want you to think.

Let’s Start with a Basic Understanding of “What is Conversion?”

Conversion is simply getting someone to take the desired action, such as choosing to opt-in to your email list, scheduling an appointment, or buying a product or service.

Your conversion rate is the percentage of traffic your website turns into leads or sales. You can double your business by getting twice as much traffic or by doubling your conversion rate with the same amount of traffic. If you improve both traffic and conversion you can experience exponential growth.

Here’s an article to help you Understand Website Conversion and How It Impacts Your Revenue.

If you want to figure out your conversion rate and calculate your website’s annual revenue, check out our free Website ROI Calculator here.

But before you head off to crunch your numbers, munch on this …

I’m going to show you how I increased my conversion rate from a very respectable 30% to an unbelievable 83.75%.

Split Testing Demystified:

Since the first step in the sales process for many starts with getting a lead, in today’s post, I’m going to explain the basics of optimizing your conversion rate by split testing your lead magnet.

Split testing is a method we use to know which improvements to a website improve the conversion rate and which lower it or don’t make an impact.

Your lead magnet is a free offer you’re giving to your audience in exchange for their email. If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you already know the ins and outs of lead magnets. If not, here are a few helpful articles:

• 5 of the Best Lead Magnet Ideas for Coaches, Consultants & Entrepreneurs
• Lead Magnets: What You Need to Know
• Not Converting Enough Leads with Your Irresistible Offer?

Step 1: Make sure you have an offer that converts.

In order to start split testing, we first need to know you have an offer that converts. We do this by showing it to visitors and measuring how many of them opt-in to get your free offer. There are a couple of easy ways to do this.

1. If you already have an audience, you can blog, email, or share your offer on social media to see if people sign up.
2. If you don’t have an audience yet, I suggest setting up a quick Facebook ad to test your offer. That way you can drive a good number of visitors to the site to see if they opt-in for your lead magnet.

Here are some blog posts on website traffic to help you get started:

• The Easy but Most Effective Way to Get Website Traffic
• Stop Wasting Your Blog Traffic & How to Maximize It!
• Website Traffic: What You Need to Know

Step 2: If you have an offer that converts, you’re ready to start split testing to improve your conversion rate.

Once you know what your base conversion rate is, it’s time to track, tweak, and test elements in your funnel to improve your conversion. By testing changes in your funnel and tracking your results, you can spot opportunities to continuously improve your conversion rate.

Remember, I promised to show you how we took our conversion rate from 30% to 83.75% by split testing and improving. We’re getting over 8.375 people opting in to get our lead magnet instead of three out of every ten visitors. Here’s how the math works out …

Here’s an example of a split test:

This weekend I started a split test on a Facebook ad for our Marketing Planner. The ad video, audience, calls to action, and the offer are exactly the same. The only thing that’s different is the headline. I have six headlines I’m testing. I’ll run the test for about a week, and then I’ll pick the winner. Here are my results so far.

Right now, I’m testing the ad headlines. I’m not going to change anything else about the landing pages, check-out page, ad copy, call to action, etc.

Once I have a winning headline, I will kill the losers and test the winning ad again. The numbers will help me choose what to test next. If you look at the number of people who clicked the link vs the number who purchased, it appears that I need to test what happens after they click. I will probably try sending people directly to the checkout page and to the landing page for the offer to see which one gets more conversions. Then I’ll start optimizing elements on the page that wins, like the headline, images, calls to action, etc.

The secret to an effective split test is to only test one single change at a time.

It’s tempting to rewrite your headline, change your button text, and try a different call to action, but if you do that, you’ll have no way of knowing which change had an effect on your conversions. Did they go up (or down) because of the headline or the call to action? Your guess is as good as mine.

Which brings me to another really good secret of split testing. You should not trust your gut. The numbers are the only way to truly know what works and doesn’t. Of course, as you do more conversion rate optimization your gut instinct and guesses will get better, but testing is critical to optimize your results.

Step 3: Measuring Your Split Test

Facebook Ads:

Facebook ads and Google AdWords are easy to measure because they will show you the analytics on your ads in their dashboard.

Items you may want to split test in your ads: 

• Headline
• Copy
• Image
• Call to Action
• Placements (how your ad is shown on the network)
• Budget
• Audience in Facebook
• Keywords in Google
• etc.

Landing Pages:

If you’re using WordPress to build your landing pages (my preferred method), there are WordPress plugins you can use to split test like Simple Page Tester. I like using Google Optimize. Here’s an article on WP Beginner showing you how to do an A/B Split Test in Google.

If you’re using a landing page tool like ClickFunnels or LeadPages, they have built in tools for split testing.

Items you may want to split test on your landing pages: 

• Headline
• Copy
• Image
• Call to Action (For example: “Send me the Cheat Sheet,” vs “Get My Cheat Sheet.” “Get Instant Access,” vs “Download Now.”)
• Page layout
• Type of opt-in: Form or pop-up button
• Design elements: fonts, colors, button styles, etc.

Email Marketing:

Most email list managers, like MailChimp and ActiveCampaign, provide ways to split test your emails. Important factors to measure in your emails are Open Rates and Click Through Rates.

Open Rates: If your audience isn’t opening your email, they’re not going to read it, click on anything, or buy anything. To optimize your open rate, you’ll want to experiment with:

• Day/time you’re sending emails
• Subject line
• Personalization
• From name/email
• Which list you’re sending it to (segmenting your list based on behaviors and interests can help improve your open rate.)

Click-Through Rates: If you’re getting good open rates but not making sales, and you know your offer converts on other platforms, take a look at your click-through rates. To optimize your click-through rates you’ll want to test:

• Call to action
• Email layout
• Email copy
• Images
• No images

Here are split testing tutorials for ActiveCampaign and MailChimp, two of the most popular email list managers our clients use.

If you’re debating which email marketing service to use, here’s our favorite and why.

When to Start Split Testing

Just like list-building, it’s never too early to begin split testing. There’s no magical number of opt-ins you must have to get started. There’s no amount of traffic that’s too small. So don’t wait—start split testing your opt-in forms and emails now, so you can enjoy the best conversion rates possible.

What Do You Need to Start Split Testing?

• Know your ideal clients
• Have an offer they can’t resist
• Lead generation funnel to get their email
• Follow-up email series to deliver your lead magnet and nurture your lead
• Traffic
• And a way to measure your conversions like Google Analytics, Split Testing software, etc.

If you don’t have one of these elements and want my help, join our Get Leads & Clients coaching program, and let’s talk!

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