WARNING: Website optimization testing is extremely addictive. Sitting behind the scenes, pulling the strings, and seeing the effect of positive change is overwhelmingly rewarding.
So now you’ve committed to testing your website. Where do you start? What do you test? While you’ll ultimately have to answer these questions for yourself, below are 7 Do’s and Don’ts to help guide a successful testing strategy.
Do Test Properly: So you tweaked your homepage, and sales shot up 50% from the prior week. Success? Not really. There are too many moving parts here to consider. Did you run a sale during the same period or send an email? In order to determine whether a new version of a page outperforms an old one, you must run both pages at the same time under the same conditions and split test them using software such as Google free website optimizer. Before you advance any further with your testing strategy, get acquainted with
Google’s powerful testing tool.
Don’t Be Afraid to Fail: In testing & optimization, failure is a success. Although you may be disappointed that the new landing page you created underperformed against the old one, had you not tested it, you would have caused unknown damage to your sales.