Have you ever wondered if you are doing enough updates to your website, or what those updates should be?  Before you look at making changes to your site it is really essential to understand what your goals are and how they are converting.  A conversion happens when a visitor to your website performs an intended action.  Your conversion rate is the ratio of the number of visitors to your website that complete the desired action compared to the total number of visitors to your website.  It is important that you define your conversions so that they are consistent with your broader business objectives.  For example, your business goals might involve maximizing your profits, increasing sales, generating leads, and improving customer communication.  Therefore you may measure a conversion as a customer purchasing something from your website, completing your contact form, subscribing to your newsletter or registering to become a member of your website.  In order to optimize your website to improve conversions you need a tool that can measure how changes to your website affect the way visitors convert on your desired actions.  Google Website Optimizer is a free tool that allows you to setup tests to confirm that changes you make to your website are having a positive impact.

Google Website Optimizer empowers you to set up controlled tests to measure how changes to your website affect your conversion rate.  By leveraging advanced analytics methods you will have the confidence to know that your website is evolving in a beneficial way.  Google Website Optimizer allows you to segment traffic to your website so different visitors see different versions of pages and once the test is finished you will know the best version to use.  Furthermore, you can run multiple tests at the same time on multiple goals so that you can quickly improve conversion rates and increase visitor satisfaction.

Testing with Google Website Optimizer

There are many different tests that you can perform ranging from basic (fonts, headlines, images, copy text, form, etc.) to more complex (multi-page forms like shopping carts, registrations, etc.).  A/B Tests allow you to serve half of your visitors one version of a page and the other half a different page.  Multivariate testing allows you to change many variables at once on the same page.  Say, for example, you want to test three different headlines for your page – the first in black, the second in red and the third in green.  You also have three different images you want to test and three different “add to cart” buttons.  Since the tool supports “full factorial” multivariate testing, you are actually testing twenty seven (3 x 3 x 3 = 27) different versions of the same page at the same time.  If you are concerned that you do not want all of your visitors participating in the tests, you can throttle your share of voice so that only some of your visitors participate.

According to Dictionary.com the definition of optimization is “the fact of optimizing; making the best of anything.”  Therefore, by participating in the continual process of optimizing your website and measuring the results you will benefit by making your website the best it can possibly be.  You will see an improvement in your conversion rates and an overall improvement in your user experience.

Here are some helpful links to help you get started on your path to having the best website possible:

Google Website Optimization

GWO Video Introduction

GWO Tricks

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!