Once you start tracking and have some base numbers it’s time to start tweaking to see if you can’t improve things. Why is this important? Let’s say you spend some time driving traffic and get 1000 visitors a week to the sales page for your new product. And let’s say you have a pretty decent 2% conversion rate. That means you make 2 sales for every 100 visitors. And let’s say to keep the math simple that each sale profits you $10.
If you leave everything as is, that’s an extra $200 per week.
If on the other hand you start tweaking and improve your sales copy, and bump that up to a 3% conversion rate you start making $300 per week without having to work any harder.
Let’s take it a step further. You start to tweak your emails and get better open rates. You also find out what traffic sources are working best and focus more of your efforts there. Without doing any extra work – just changing what you work on a bit, you suddenly get 2000 visitors a week to your sales page – resulting in $600 in income week in and week out. That’s a pretty big difference from the $200 per week we started with.
Do you see how powerful testing and tweaking can be? A little bit of time tracking and testing different copy, content and traffic can make a big difference to your bottom line.
Let’s look at a few different things that are worth testing and tweaking:
Test Your Copy
Start by testing and tweaking your copy. This will include a variety of things. Let’s take a look at a few different parts and pieces that are worth tweaking and testing.
Your Sales Pages
The first thing you should work on is your sales pages. This is where your customers are spending their money and every improvement there will directly impact your bottom line. And as you test, tweak and improve the rest of the funnel, you end up with even more sales down the road. In other words, start here.
The list of things to test is almost endless and this will be an ongoing process, but start with these:
- Change the overall message and see what converts better.
- Try a different headline.
- Chose different images.
- Try various different order buttons
- Show the price vs. don’t show the price on the sales page.
- Use a different call to action before the order button.
- Try listing the benefits of your product in various different ways.
- Include different testimonials and track where you’re placing them.
- Try adding an order button toward the top of the sales page.
- Test a long sales page against a short one.
- Try a few different sales videos and an order button.
Start studying copy writing and implement what you’re learning on your sales pages. Keep testing and keep the better converting sales page.
Your Opt-in Pages and Opt-in Forms
Next let’s make sure we keep getting new subscribers and prospects in the funnel. Improving our email opt-in rates is the name of the game. Aweber makes it very easy to test different opt-in forms and pages. Start here and test:
- Different types of forms.
- Different headlines.
- Different calls to action (i.e. Subscribe, signup now).
- Different subscribe buttons.
- How much information you ask for (i.e. Name, State and Email vs. Email only).
- Colors
- Including links to privacy policy, archives etc.
Don’t forget to test the position of your opt-in boxes as well. In addition to adding it to your blog side bar, try adding one at the end of your blog posts for example.
Another great tip is to add individual opt-in boxes to the bottom of your popular pages that use copy or test that’s directly related to the content of the post.
For example, let’s say you have a cooking blog and your opt-in offer is about meal planning. One of your high traffic posts is your famous vegetable lasagna recipe. On this particular post your opt-in form could say something like: “Signup below and I’ll show you how you can make this yummy lasagna part of your weekly meal plan.
Your Email Copy
Take a look at your email copy as well. The first thing you want to pay attention to is subject lines and open rates. Compare your past emails and see if you can find a pattern of what types of emails your readers were most likely to open.
Pay attention to the emails you get as well. What grabs your attention and makes you open an email? Save good examples in a “swipe file” and adapt them to your own needs.
The second piece of data you want to pay attention to is click through rates. The point of the emails is to get the reader to take action, click through and either read a blog post or buy something. How likely are they to click and what types of links are they clicking? Pay attention to those numbers and try to improve what you’re doing.
Learning more about copywriting is one of the best things you can do for your business. If you can improve your conversions, you don’t have to spend as much time doing everything else.
This is by no means an extensive list. Think of it like this, anytime a visitor or prospect has a decision to make there’s copy involved. Test, tweak and fine-tune your copy to get higher and higher conversion rates each step of the way. As you get better at this and improve those rates along various elements of your sales funnel, your overall conversion and thus the money you make will continue to increase.
Tweak Content
Once you’ve worked on your sales pages and email funnel, it’s time to take a look at your content. Creating new content is a lot of work, and while it is something you want to do regularly, there’s also a lot to be gained from improving the posts and pages you already have on your website.
Improve SEO
Not having to actively work on traffic day in and day out will save you a lot of time. And the best way to do that is to get better at search engine optimization (SEO). Wouldn’t it be nice to get a steady stream of targeted traffic 24 hours a day?
SEO changes, but the basic principles stay the same. Find a keyword or key phrase that people search for. Create some content on that topic and be sure to use your keyword in the title, url, content, alt tags of images etc. Don’t overdo it. Share the content online and link to it from other posts you’ve written. Rinse and repeat with more keywords on a regular basis.
Read up on SEO and find out what’s helping. Is it incoming links, social signals, updated content? The rules change frequently but as your site grows its authority, you’ll start to rank for more and more keywords. All that free traffic will start to add up.
Make It Easier To Share On Social Media
Everyone has a Facebook and Twitter account and most of us are also active on Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumbler etc. Take advantage of social media and get your current audience to help you grow your reach.
Make it easy to share your content. Find a plugin and add some buttons that make sharing your posts quick and easy. Start your own social media hubs (a Facebook page for example) and post links to your content. Encourage your followers to comment, like and share. It won’t take long before you start to see an increase in reach. Serve your audience, get to know them, give them a chance to get to know you and grow your traffic at the same time.
Improve The Look Of Your Content
We live in a very visual word and also in a very fast paced one. How often do you come across an article or blog post and actually take the time to read it? Chances are you’ll glance at the image, the headlines, and the bullet points and make a split second decision on whether or not it is worth reading. Your readers work the same way.
Look at your content with fresh eyes. Is it easy to scan? Do you have a good headline and some helpful subheadings in your post? Is the image attention grabbing?
Make a list of what needs to be improved and then sit down and get to work. It won’t take as long as writing fresh content and you’ll get a much better response with your new and improved post.
Do You Have A Call To Action
Take one last look at the post. What do you want readers to do when they finish reading? Is it clear? Sometimes you want them to leave you a comment or share your post on Facebook. Sometimes you may want them to read another post. But most of the time, you should try to either get them on your list or sell them something.
Figure out what action you want your readers to take. Carefully craft a strong CTA (call to action) and include it. See how it’s working and if needed come back and tweak again.
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