Conversion Optimization: How to Split Test Your Way to Success

Want to get more leads and subscribers?

Have you considered optimizing your opt-in forms?

To explore conversion rate optimization for your online forms, I interview Chris Dayley.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is an on-demand talk radio show from Social Media Examiner. It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

In this episode, I interview Chris Dayley, who is the VP of site testing and optimization at Disruptive Advertising, an agency that specializes in site testing and analytics. Chris's clients include Fandango, Lids.com, and Citrix.

Chris explores conversion rate optimization and split testing.

You'll discover which elements to test for your opt-in forms.

Share your feedback, read the show notes, and get the links mentioned in this episode below.
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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Conversion Optimization
How Chris Got Into This Space

Chris got his start driving traffic to websites using search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC), and social media. The company he worked for was trying to figure out how to monetize their traffic because they were having a hard time getting visitors to convert.

Because no one at the company knew about conversion rate optimization, Chris picked it up as a pet project.

When he first proposed to test some changes to the site design, there was a lot of pushback from the site designers. After he ran his first round of tests, some of the pages began to see 10% to 15% lifts in conversion.

He fell in love with finding out how seemingly small changes could have a big impact on user behavior.

Listen to the show to hear the company's initial reaction to testing and the results they got from it.

Conversion Rate Optimization and Why It Matters

Chris explains that conversion rate optimization is a scientific way to figure out what your audience wants to see on your website in order to convert, and he notes that it should be half of any digital marketer's focus.

Driving traffic is only half the battle. While he used to assume that if he drove good traffic to a site, it was going to convert, years of testing have shown that a large portion of your audience won't convert unless you give them the experience they're seeking.

Conversion rate optimization is a way of testing different concepts and ideas on your site to find out what your audience actually wants to see.

Listen to the show to discover why we use conversion rate optimization at Social Media Examiner and the effect it's had on our marketing.

Where to Start Testing Opt-in Forms

When doing form optimization, whether it's opt-in, lead generation, or checkout forms, the first things to look at are imagery, color, and font sizes. Make sure your form stands out in contrast to the page and that the image or lack of image is helping your users, Chris says.

Chris recommends trying different variations of images, and to make sure the concepts are different, aren't distracting, and add some context to the offer.

For example, in Social Media Examiner's previous pop-up, there was no image, even though our provider OptinMonster and other web-based form providers such as LeadPages allow you to include an image. Chris recommended testing an image of the cover of the actual product on offer, a graphic representation of the title, and an icon representation (shown in the image below.)

The icon came out as the winner by a long shot!

When asked about how many elements to test at a time, Chris advises different approaches for different projects. There are basically four elements in an opt-in form: the headline, content, a potential image, and a button to opt in. With so few elements, each one will have a huge role in the conversion rate, and it's easy to separate them out and test them one at ...