Business optimisation

A website is the perfect place to test and find out what works best.  'Split', 'A/B' and 'Multivariate' testing methods allow you to find what gives you the best results.  In its most obvious form you would take a headline and test different versions of it.  You can use tools to collect data and see which headlines perform the best. Then you can create variations of your best headline and test again, constantly improving your results.

There are many aspects you can test:

• Page copy
• Link text
• Product prices
• Images
• Colours
• Designs

When you apply testing to optimise your site and improve several areas the results you get can be astounding. For example:

Start situation

• Your ads are bringing in 100 visitors to your site a day
• 25% of your customers stay on your site and browse
• 25% of those that stay on your site browse to a product or service
• 25% of those that browse to a product eventually buy

The calculation:

Customers after bouncing: 100 x 0.25 = 25

Customers that browse to a product: 25 x 0.25 = 6.25

Customers that buy your product: 25 x 0.25 = 1.56 customers buy a product each day

End situation

Say we only improve each aspect by 10%

• Your ads are bringing in 110 visitors to your site a day
• 27.5% of your customers stay on your site and browse
• 27.5% of those that stay on your site browse to a product or service
• 27.5% of those that browse to a product eventually buy

Customers after bouncing: 110 x 0.275 = 30.25

Customers that browse to a product: 30.25 x 0.275 = 8.3

Customers that buy your product: 8.3 x 0.275 = 2.29 customers buy a product each day

That's a 47% improvement!

If you improve each aspect by 20% then you get over double the customers each day!

When you consider your fixed costs, the difference this can make to your profits is amazing.