Conversion testing

So your website looks great, is easy to use and has all the right information on it. But does it convert for you? And if not, why not?

It might not be anything to do with your website – it might be that your offering needs some work or that your prices aren’t right. Or it could just be something simple like your new checkout button you had added on last week doesn’t work on the browser most of your visitors use. Maybe that shade of blue you thought looked really nice just doesn’t stand out on the “contact us” button and you should try a red one?

You can make small changes and monitor the results, or you can do split or multi variable testing where your website operates with a few different designs at once. As people navigate your site, they’re shown the different designs (one at a time – visitor A might see design 1, whilst visitor B sees design 2) and then you can view the stats to see which design lead to the most conversions.

If you notice a sudden decline in visitors/conversions then it’s worth having a word with your developer about any possible reasons. It could be that a new browser has been released which is causing problems. On the other hand it could just be a quiet time! So, as your web developer is probably going to have to charge for the time it takes to investigate any possible snags (as new browsers are outside of anyone’s control) you might want to be fairly sure that something’s up - or ideally, have a look yourself to see if anything seems broken.

Lots of successful website owners are constantly refining their designs or trying new ones to keep seeing how they can improve their conversion rates.