Creating an ... sales letter page is an ... partof your online success. However, unless you're testing ... each critical element in your sales content andyour sales process, you ma
Creating an effective sales letter page is an essential part
of your online success. However, unless you're testing and
tracking each critical element in your sales content and
your sales process, you may be losing a great deal of time
and money.
You can dramatically increase your sales conversions simply
by taking the time to test and track your results. Not only
will testing and tracking enable you to determine what's
working and what's not, but it will also help you to focus
your energy on the techniques that produce results.
When testing, keep in mind that, a technique that produces
results for one person or one web site may not produce
results for you or for your web site. There is no one size
fits all technique that works for everyone. You must develop
your own style and technique and test your results to
determine what works for you.
So, what are we measuring? Well, you may think that I am
over simplifying matters here but I believe that there is
only one real measure and that is simply the outcome of your
visitors’ decision when faced with a choice. Whatever your
most wanted response is your visitor will either say yes
or no.
Every decision, or call to action, that you want a prospect
to take must be tracked. The result of that tracking will be
a yes or a no. When you know that a specific number of
visitors took the desired action, and the remainder did not,
you can analyse your results. If you take the total number
of unique yes calls to action, and you divide them by the
total number of unique visitors to the web page you will
know your conversion rate. For example, if 1,000 people
visit a web page where you have an ezine opt-in form, and 30
people opt-in, your conversion ratio for that opt-in form is
3% (30/1000).
So what parts of your web page should you try to improve?
Here is a list of web page elements that you should focus
your attention on:
1. Headline
2. First few paragraphs
3. Follow up
4. Deadline
5. Scarcity
6. Delayed payment option
7. Price
8. Upgrade
9. Downgrade
10. Good until cancelled
11. Guarantee
12. Immediate back end sale
13. Bonus items
14. Reposition your offer
15. Alternative colours and graphics
16. Readability
17. Complementary product endorsements
18. Header graphic
19. Order page
20. Payment process
21. Navigation links
22. Everything else!
When you are testing and tracking make sure that you only
work on one element at a time. If you change two variables
and you see an improvement in conversion ratios you will not
be able to identify which one factor made the contribution.
You should also bear in mind that some changes may result in
poorer performance; you may get less sign ups to your ezine
or less people buying your product. This is not a failure it
simply means that you have discovered a tactic that doesn’t
work for your audience or your product.
One final point, be patient. The expert statisticians will
tell you that you need at least 25 actions for a test to be
statistically valid. That means 25 new ezine subscribers or
25 sales. Anything less than that and your test results will
not really be accurate enough. In fact the more results the
better, you should consider 25 to be the absolute minimum
and aim to get 30 to 40 if you can.
