Don't Argue - Split Test in 5 easy steps.....

It never ceases to amaze me how many online marketers I come across that are still struggling away trying to determine "what best business practice" is for their website content and/or features. Whether it be the look and feel of a certain page or the placement of an 'apply now' button, these people insist on spending valuable time arguing discussing what will work best on their particular page/site/banner/message/navigation. One of the key benefits to being an online marketer is the ability to be accountable through proper analysis. By analyzing everything you can be confident that your decisions are the right ones and take accountability for them so that you can move onto the next improvement you want to make to your website. Never forget thy words from the Big G (not God, Google - if there is a difference). Those words were "fast is better than slow". There are various types of analysis that we as online marketers must become accustomed to in order to succeed in the field of e-commerce. One of these is split testing. I love split testing as it allows you to make quick decisions on sites with a lot of traffic and accurate choices on crucial elements of start up sites. It's not rocket science: 1     Implement option (recipe) A 2     Measure recipe A on agreed sample (time or number of visitors) 3     Implement option (recipe) B 4     Measure recipe B on same sample criteria as recipe A 5     Compare recipe A versus recipe B results and you have a winner! If you have the technical know how you may even want to test both your recipes at once. Some web analytics packages will help you do this. If you are even keener you may want to test more than two recipes all at once. Here's 5 tips for Split Testing Trainee's *KISS - Keep it simple to start out with. Use the five steps above *Allocate budget to testing as to ensure that testing becomes the standard within your organisation *The bigger the sample the better - but there is a balance with time on smaller sites *Invest in Web Analytics software that makes split testing easier for us not so technical half-geeks *Make sure that you have a desired action to ensure that your split testing is improving your ROI objectives Now go forth and Split Test