When I released OptinSkin back at the beginning of 2012, one of the main marketing angles for the product was that it allows split-testing. Similarly, when I released my free training guide Cloud Blueprint, split-testing was stressed so much as something that can take you from being someone who does ‘okay’ online to someone who can quit their job. When changing just one word on your sales or squeeze page can literally mean a 1,000% change in conversions, I’m amazed when I don’t see people doing it.
Today I’m going to share some of my more private landing page tips that help me get more subscribers and sales than my competition in virtually any niche I enter. I’m also going to give you a high-converting squeeze page template you can customize until your heart’s content. Finally, I’ll share – step-by-step – how to implement split-testing so you have no reason not to be doing it.
100% Free HTML Squeeze Page
I want to kick off this post by giving away a totally free HTML squeeze page that you can use to easily collect email subscribers. I did have the idea of using WordPress and custom pages for this giveaway but I thought it would be too much hassle to make it compatible with people’s themes etc. (and there are premium plugins which do exactly this). The freebie is more about giving you an easy way to quickly get into split-testing without needing any technical knowledge (besides FTP) and start building your readership.
I designed this after putting together so many squeeze pages recently for sites in my PPC case study and this template was one of the best that I found to be working. You can view a preview of it and some of the features, below:
Installation
To install the template, you simply need FTP access to your server. If you do not have this, simply ask your web host what those details would be and then use a tool like Filezilla to access your site. Navigate to wherever your website files are – usually public_html – and create a new folder for the name of your squeeze page. EmailA or something similar is fine. Then just drag and drop the theme that I give you to this location, and it will be up and running instantly.
The theme can be found here: http://www.viperchill.com/SqueezePage.zip (Right Click > Save Link As)
User Guide
I did spend a lot of time putting this together so the user guide is behind a little ‘share please’ box. I’ve never done anything like this before, but would appreciate it if you could help me spread the word. If you are more technically inclined already it should be very easy to edit the theme without the guide. However, if you are a beginner, you’ll get access to a huge page on this website which gives you a lot more information.
6 Things I Learned from My Last Round of Split-Testing
Please keep in mind that the following lessons may or may not work well in your industry. The true beauty of split-testing is that you really never know what is going to convert highly for your audience and the plus side is that there’s always a lot of fun in trying.
1. A laptop screen above my opt-in form worked better than a DVD style cover, an eBook cover and an audio CD graphic. The audio CD was by far the worst graphic that I tested. Keep in mind that I did put an image on the laptop screen that was relevant to what I was giving away and didn’t just leave it blank
2. A blue opt-in box worked better than any other colour I tested. Even when I matched the opt-in box to other colours on the site (such as having a red box with a red title) I still couldn’t beat blue with blue for my particular niche.
3. Having a Facebook like box on the page lowered conversions every single time. I’ve had it help when I’m selling a product, but for a squeeze page it just seemed to take people’s attention away from what I was actually doing. Heat-mapping tells me that people weren’t clicking on it – which is fine, I don’t want them to – so it’s not simply that I was directing them elsewhere and thus lowering conversions.
4. Words like “Weird” “unexpected” “unexplainable” “shocking” and so on which increase people’s curiosity helped a great deal. For instance, it would be better for me to say “This weird piece of software sped up my PC overnight” then something really clean and clear like “I installed this software and my computer became faster”. That’s just an example; I’m not involved in the speeding up of your computers.
5. The title still has the biggest impact for me when it comes to increasing conversions. This not only includes the words used as mentioned above, but the colour and even more importantly the font that is used.
6. Having an image underneath the opt-in box (even like the grass you see in my example) could not be beaten. It increased my conversion rate every single time. I played with this to show people’s faces, screenshots of the software they were getting, random ‘press’ images, and so on. Though not all of the images worked much better, every single one increased conversion rates in some way.
Using My Magic Grass Idea for Higher Conversion Rates
The last point there, number 6, was what I refer to as ‘magic grass’. It’s a really simple idea but something that just seems to work over and over again for me when it comes to getting more opt-ins. Have something on your page that people are likely to click on and then remind them to opt-in using a javascript alert.
Click on the grass below to get an idea of what I’m talking about (you’ll have to be viewing this on site, and not in an RSS reader or your inbox):
If you’re using this on a really long page – like this blog post – you’ll have to pick a point in the page using the anchor attribute for HTML links where the user is returned to after they click OK. You probably noticed you got redirected to just above the grass. Typically I don’t have to do this on opt-in pages as they’re short enough that people don’t have to scroll, so it’s fine if someone is taken back to the ‘top’ of the page.
Here’s the code:
<a href="#" onClick="alert('Hold on quick fingers! Enter your email address in the box for INSTANT ACCESS to your free guide!')">IMAGE CODE HERE</a>
Make sure you put the code for an HTML image or whatever it is you want to trigger a pop-up where I have written ‘IMAGE CODE HERE’. It works especially well for:
- Any graphics on the page showing what you’re promoting
- Graphics showing underneath your opt-in form (possibly as wide as the page)
- Thumbnails showing a clip of a video they’re about to get access to
You can make the message be anything really. Just make sure you’re not condescending and make sure you do write in a fun, playful way. The key point is to remind people that they’ll get the bonus or benefit once they opt-in.
If you use any kind of heat mapping software (I use what’s built into Visual Website Optimizer which I’ll cover later) then you can see where people are clicking and then use that section of your page to trigger this kind of javascript alert.
Please note that I actually wasn’t using a picture of grass in the heatmap above, but I was using something with the same image dimensions (wide but short) which was semi-relevant to what I was giving away. You can split-test this of course to see what works best for you.
Don’t Show Your Add to Cart Button Instantly
This works especially well if you’re doing one of those ‘free guide’ or free presentation style videos where you are actually using that free concept to push towards a sale. If people can see an “Add to Cart” button under the video from the very start they know you have more intentions than just giving away something for free. At least give them a chance to give you a chance by delaying the effect.
<script type="text/javascript">
function showBuyLink() {
document.getElementById("buylink").style.visibility = "visible";
}
// adjust this as needed, 1 sec = 1000
setTimeout("showBuyLink()", 230000);
</script>
<div id="buylink" style="visibility: hidden" align="center">
YOUR ADD TO CART BUTTON / LINK GOES HERE
</div>
Don’t forget to change the part in bold with how long you want the delay to be. 1000 equals a 1 second delay. If you’re promoting a 10 minute video then I recommend trying about 3-4 minutes in because at least this way you’re only showing it to people once you’ve really got their attention with it. As with the theme of this blog post though, this is something you should absolutely be testing.
Get People to Click-in and They’ll Opt-in
This was one of the random ideas I had a few weeks ago that I put into action. At first it sucked pretty badly but with some tweaking it did outperform other pages in some ways. I found that it worked best when someone already know of me / my website and then went to buy or sign-up for something. However for cold traffic it didn’t seem to be as effective as having everything on one page by default.
What this does is basically lure people into taking a very simple action – clicking a link – and then getting them to opt-in or convert in other ways after. For example, you would say you’re giving away something for free and then tell people to click a link to get that free thing – making them assume the link is the access. That link then just unveils more content on that same page and doesn’t take them anywhere else.
My guess is that – psychology wise – they’ve already performed one action and engaged with the page so they’re more likely to repeat it and engage again. Here’s an example below:
This wont work if you’re reading this in your inbox or an RSS reader, you’ll have to come to the post
What you reveal is not a boom graphic but the rest of your page where they convert. Hat tip goes to RS for the code. There is a much better way of doing it that I used to use but I can’t find the old code source I’m afraid. The “much better” way simply means that you don’t have to write Click here to download 3 times in a row in the code. It’s only a once off thing though.
Split-Testing is Everything
Split-testing is so crucial to your success when it comes to sales page and squeeze pages that I just can’t over-hype it enough. If you’re not testing, you’re losing money. I can enter brand new niches where I know less about the market than anyone else and quickly overtake their income because I’m finding out what a particular audience really responds to rather than just guessing based on my extensive “experience”. This is not just some broad statement either, I’ve done this for friends and clients where I know very specific figures about their income / leads and I’ve been able to surpass that through nothing but hardcore testing.
Here’s a good example from Mind Valley when they split-tested promoting the Silva Method which has millions of customers.
Recently for example, I removed all text from the Backlinks XXX sales page and replace it with a video. We’ve tried (and are trying) lots of videos on the sales page. Every single variation with a video beat the version of the page with a lot of text that I had in place for months. It sucks that I put so much time and effort into some of the graphics we had up on that page – literally a week of solid work – only to find out it’s not really helping us get sales at all.
But that’s what testing is for. You have to put your ego aside and accept that something else might be working better even if you don’t want it to be. I’ve put together two short guides for you on how to set up testing with different services.
Split-Testing with Visual Website Optimizer
I read the story behind Visual Website Optimizer (not an affiliate link) recently and have to say it was pretty inspiring. Started by one guy out in Mumbai, India, all he wanted was to make $1,000 per month from the service to replace his current income and then some. A few years down the line he’s pulling in millions of dollars per month, works with his best friends, and never took money from a single investor.
Not a bad end result.
The reason the service is so successful is because they’re great at every aspect of their offering. Great support, a great interface and most importantly, great (and fast) results for your split tests. When you first sign-up to the service you get a list of options for split-testing as you can see below:
A/B testing and Multivariate testing seem to be the most popular that I read about online. A/B testing will basically replace one object of the page for you with another. Like swapping between a red opt-in box and a blue opt-in box. Multivariate testing will variate through multiple objects on your page (such as titles, graphics, fonts — whatever you choose) and try to find you the best end result. Multivariate testing only really works well if you have a lot of traffic though, as there are so many variables that it needs to test.
I don’t actually use either of these, but instead rely on split-URL testing. I make too many odd changes (such as changes to the code snippets I shared above) that I find easier just to keep on separate pages of WordPress and use the split-URL options.
After you’ve then put in different variations of the page you want to test, it’s time to select what your goal is. Visual Website Optimizer have options for pretty much everything:
I generally use either visits a page or submits a form. Both of them can be used for tracking opt-ins as you put in your form submit URL from Aweber or you can put your thank you page in as the page that someone has to visit. If you aren’t sure what to track or how to track it then I recommend sending through an email to support. I had a unique situation with some membership site software I run (they go to Paypal then back to my website) and wanted to ensure it would be tracked correctly as the produce is expensive (and sales rarer) so I would have to wait a while for it to test properly.
They promptly responded and helped me select the correct variable.
With testing, your results aren’t always going to be better than your original page. Sometimes your gut instinct is pretty good and the changes you make actually lower conversions. Here’s an example of this happening for me:
Sometimes they go the right way but it’s hard to separate a winner (it can take a lot of traffic) and you need a little patience. I do have far more clear cut examples of of successful testing but this was such an anomaly for me that I had to take a screenshot. I know the traffic numbers are very low so it’s too early to pick a winner, but never have I ever seen the exact number of conversions from visitors for two additional variations that I’m testing.
Split-Testing with Google Analytics Experiments
Google used to have their own split-testing tool that was independent from Analytics called Google Website Optimizer. It seems these days this is now built into Google Analytics so you’ll need to make sure you’re running that on your website to take advantage of this free offering. I personally don’t use Google Analytics at all anymore – though my clients do – so don’t have any personal tests to show you.
I will show you how to set it up though. Once you’ve logged into your Analytics account, you’re going to want to click on Content then select Experiments. You’ll be faced with the following options window:
For the percentage of traffic to test I would probably go for 100% unless you’re making some drastic changes that might put off a large portion of your audience. If that’s the case, then scale things down accordingly.
The next option will then ask you to define the goal (conversion) you wish to track. Something simple like someone landing on your thank you page – where they get redirected after subscribing to your email list – is an obvious one you can use for testing both your own site and on my free squeeze page.
You’ll then see a preview of the experiment before it goes live with the tracking code you’ll need to install on your site.
Simply follow the instructions here and you should be up and running. As mentioned earlier, I don’t use Google Analytics for website tracking so unfortunately don’t have any reports to share with you like I do for Visual Website Optimizer. As with most things Google though, it appears incredibly easy to set-up and be on your way to getting more conversions if you don’t have the budget (or desire) to use VWO.
I hope I’ve inspired you to give split-testing a go if you aren’t doing it already. And if you are doing it, some code and ideas which might help to improve your conversions even further. If you have any questions or feedback, I’m here in the comments. I would love to know what you think…
You may view the latest post at
http://www.viperchill.com/ultimate-squeeze/
Build Great Backlinks
Glen
peter.clarke@designed-for-success.com
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