Every small business wants more traffic to their websites, regardless of the industry, but traffic alone does not guarantee success, there must be a certain level of conversion and long-term engagement with the online users, and one of the best ways to do this is with A/B Testing.
Chris Dayley is a Digitial Marketing Entrepreneur from Lindon Utah and his company Disruptive Advertising help business learn what their users want on their websites using psychological based testing and analytics.
When I had my podiatry business in Cairns, I delved into A/B testing on a small scale, so it's great to have Chris Dayley explain this process in more detail.
The Purpose of A/B Testing
When you drive people to your website using specific SEO you want to see conversion results. The purpose of A/B Testing is to increase the results by splitting the traffic to different landing pages and learning what your audience ultimately wants to see on your website.
There is a lot of psychology involved to work out what influences people to make certain decisions when they're online.
Sometimes Success Is Not Always Success
A lot of small business owners never look at their analytics and therefore never know why their online campaign failed.
But a successful campaign is not always a good thing either, especially if the business owners do not know why it was a success without knowing why it's hard to duplicate.
Do Not Copy Your Competitors
Copying your competitors is not a smart business move. Your campaign could crash and burn because your audience and brand are unique to you, therefore taking the same approach as a competitor won't work, or work as well as it could.
An Existence Test
It's important to work out what should and should not be on specific website pages.
For example, on your homepage, do you have too much information or too little? Have you tested what happens if you remove sections, numbers of products and amount of information available?
Information overload can be a detriment. However, some website will produce better results with more information or products.
Styling and colour, even though visually significant, is not as important as the user experience and how easy it is to find what they are looking for on your website.
Words On A Page
The amount of text on a page can attract and repel people depending on how they are consuming your content.
There is a different user experience between consuming content on a desktop computer and a mobile telephone.
Mobile users tend to prefer a shorter length blog, however, if it is too short it can run the risk of not having enough depth, so keep this in mind when writing. What does your audience want?
Where Do You Start With Split Testing?
Google Optimize is perfect for A/B Testing, and it lets you select which pages on your website you want to test, it allows you to edit those pages, or create a new page.
To learn more follow the instructions, or you can go to the Disruptive Advertising website and download the free Starter Guide.
"Every Small Business Should Be Doing Some Form Of Testing".
Testing Changes Your Mindset
When you're in testing mode, it puts you in the mindset of wanting what's best for the end user, your audience. If you're not testing, you're not learning.
If you're not sure where to start, pick something and test it. It could be the headline, a photo, the amount of text on the page, or different action buttons.
Ask good business questions and develop a hypothesis.
Declutter Large Websites
If you have hundreds of articles and blogs, you can condense them, update them and re-release, or delete them altogether if outdated.
Take a look at your Google Analytics and work out your most successful pages with consistent traffic. Make your decisions based on data, not assumptions.
High Traffic & Low Conversions
If your traffic is high, but your conversions are low don't assume you have to change the webpage, first take a close look your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is being directed from.
If most of your traffic is coming from Facebook Ads, it could be crappy traffic.
Contact your Web Developer if you don't know how to get into your website google analytics.
Your Website Should Be Consistently Evolving
Many people create a website and do nothing with it, or they do a token redesign every 12-months, and if this is all you're doing your missing some perfect opportunities to increased traffic.
Audience behaviour is constantly changing, and your website must do the same.
It's all about the user experience, and therefore you need to have clearly defined buttons on every page.
Monday Morning Tip
Try something new. If you stick with the same activities each day, you'll get the same results.
"To accomplish a goal you've never reached, you have to do things you've never done".
If you have any questions about this episode, please email me or you can email
You can also connect with Chris Dayley on Twitter and Linkedin @ChrisDayley
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