If you want to make more from your current content you absolutely MUST test different layouts, buy buttons, text links, banner ads, and opt in pages.
Creating a post or page on your site and then leaving it alone - even if it's making affiliate sales or getting sign-ups on your email list - is simply not sufficient.
Suppose you have 100 visitors to an affiliate post on your website and 5% of those visitors are clicking a link and buying something. If the average price is $100 and you earn a 7% commission then you have sales totaling $500 (5 sales of $100 each) and a commission of
$35.
But what happens if you can boost the results so that 10% of those visitors are clicking a link and buying? You double your commission to $70 (10 sales
of $100 each).
All with a page or post you already
built.
Something as simple as changing the affiliate links in
your post or moving the buy button to a higher position on the page could make all the difference in your results.
Unless you test, you'll never know.
I'm going to guess that most of you have not done any testing at all - because it's complicated, it involves math, and it's so easy to forget that you haven't even thought about it.
Yet, testing is a critical component of running any website.
When I heard yesterday that a new service was coming on the market that would make the whole testing thing easier, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. That's why I'm still up at nearly 1:30am my time. I thought it was coming out later in the day but I noticed it went on sale early - and at a discount I didn't know was coming! .
I bought it and you can get the same discount here:
I haven't had much time to test it and I don't know the creators. For all I know this could be one of those things that doesn't
work as it says it does but I didn't want to wait several days to tell you about it as then you'd miss the current discount.
I have, though, logged in, played around with the dashboard, and watched some of the tutorial videos. It is as easy to create tests as they show in the demo videos. I also wanted to understand how the service works and how it could be applied to Amazon affiliate sites.
Already I've seen some benefits compared to doing split testing using the free WordPress plugin I've used before.
BENEFITS:
- Can run multiple kinds of tests
- Split
tests where you just want to test a small change on a page and multiple URL tests where you want to compare results of a completely different look. You can run multiple split tests even inside of one affiliate post.
- You don't have to create a whole new page on your site
- You can, but you don't have to for simple tests like buy button colors, text link colors, banners and more.
- You can set the software to automatically apply the winner for
you
- No need to remember to check the results each day. Set up the test, set the goals, and when the service identifies the winner that's all that will show on your website.
How the changes are made on your site is a bit technical (but testing IS technical no matter what tool you use).
In a nutshell, you have some HTML
in your post that you want to test. Maybe it's an affiliate link and you want to test whether you get more clicks to Amazon with a red text link versus a blue one.
You'd
copy the HTML for the affiliate link from inside your post, put it in the dashboard of Split Test Monkey, copy that HTML into another box in the dashboard and change the HTML to show another color of text link. The service then generates a piece of code to put in that post. Any time a visitor comes to that post, the code you got from Split Monkey decides which version of the affiliate link to show to the visitor and tracks the results.
You could do this with code you have in sidebars, too, like banner ads and opt-in forms. You just tell Split Monkey which piece of code to replace with other code.
CONS:
- You don't have access to the service from inside WordPress
- You have to log into a separate site. Of course, if you are going to run tests on multiple sites then at least you can see them all from one dashboard.
- Have to track Amazon affiliate results manually
- To track results, the service requires that you put a piece of code on the "success page" (the page you want visitors to go to from the page on which you have the code). For Amazon
affiliates, that success page is on Amazon and we can't put code on the Amazon site. That means you're going to have to manually select the winner since the service won't be able to tell. Analyzing your Amazon clicks, sales, and conversion rates will tell you if you're seeing improvements. You may need to use different Amazon tracking IDs in order to tell the difference between the two tests. You could also use code from Google Analytics to track clicks on your affiliate
links to help monitor the results.
Are there other services that do this? Probably. Do I know of them? No. Is this one better?
I have no idea. I only know that I've purchased it, that the price is reasonable and that I absolutely see some features that are going to help me.
Considering how
many emails I received asking if I'd purchased Social Multiplier (I did not...) I thought I'd head those off at the pass with as honest a review of Split Test Monkey as I could give while the discount is still available.
This is an even more powerful tool for those who create
landing pages or are building email lists.
You do have access to the success page for those tests so you can use the auto-optimizer feature to automatically show the winner of any test even if you forget you're
running a test!
If you currently have testing tools you use, take a look at Split Test Monkey anyway and see how they compare. The price is low enough that
it's worth another test - your tool against this one.
If you don't have a testing tool but know that you need one and will use one, I think this one is
flexible enough to meet a variety of needs.
If the thought of testing scares you silly and you know you won't use this tool no matter how easy it might be
- don't buy it. Start small and study up on the benefits of split testing websites.
There were four (I think?) upsells when I purchased. Some didn't interest me
(a headliner package, for example) but others were awfully tempting.
The creators do seem to have some interesting software and packages. I'm just saying I didn't buy
any of them and you don't need to buy any to use Split Test Monkey. In fact, if you buy at the current discount it includes lifetime updates, no monthly fees, and unlimited tests.
Don't miss the discount - I have no idea how long it's in place but you'll see a pop up box with a coupon code for 20% off while it's available.
Get the discount here:
Hope that helps!
Sincerely,
Erica Stone
erica@extremereviewer.com
