Have you ever heard a marketer say, “I know testing is important. I just don’t know what to test.”
I can’t count the times I have heard that over the last 20 years.
When I hear someone say this, I’m reminded of a quote from bank robber by the name of Willie Sutton. When asked why he robbed banks, Sutton simply answered, “because that’s where the money was.”
Test where the money is.
For ecommerce sites this means conducting tests around:
- Checkout. One hundred percent of your buyers go through it.
- SEO and SEM landing pages. A significant portion of your new customer acquisition happens here.
- Email signups. Some 90 percent or more of new visitors to your site leave without making a purchase. Each email address you capture is worth $10 to 20 in annual revenue with very little marginal expense.
- Home page. Some 40 to 50 percent of your shoppers begin on this page, particularly repeat customers.
- Cart page. For every dollar you get through checkout, there’s another dollar stuck in a cart. Try to unstick some of them!
You can easily design a year’s worth of tests around these areas. Then, next year, try another year’s worth of tests here. It’s where the money is.
