How We Refine Our Site's Content
written by Allan on January 28, 2011
Definition: Good content is content that converts the visitor into a sign-up.
Like everything in business, creating great content is an iterative process. Face it, we're all just guessing what the user wants to hear and see. It's not until we test our product, ask our customers and refine our content that we finally find the golden nuggets of content that do the converting.
Start with A/B Testing with Optimizely.com
Optimizely provides SUPER quick setup of A/B testing. Google Website Optimizer is good, but Optimizely is what you should be using. It allows you to setup and start experiments in literally a minute.
Don't know what A/B testing is? Here's a definition.
Things to Test:
- Button Colors
- Button Verbiage
- Titles/Headers on Pages
- Pricing
- Trial Lengths
- Here's some great examples of results at abtests.com.
Ask Users with KissInsights.com
KissInsights provides a little form that pops up after a few minutes. There are a variety of forms and settings. You can get great data from your visitors. There are a couple forms on KissInsights that have blown my mind. Example: they have a form that says "Is there anything preventing you from signing up at this point?" With a submission of this form, the user is basically telling you "Hey here's what I need to know for you to sell me your product." Magical, right?
How do you know when your content is perfect?
Its not, it never will be. Keep testing, keep asking, keep refining. Sell your product or service with less words, more emotion, sell value.
Now, go make your content better. If you want me to review your app, just ask.
Other Useful Tools for Increasing Conversions:
Tools I want to try:
- DigMyData.com
- NinjaButton.com
- TheSunnyTrail.com
- Performable.com
- VisualWebsiteOptimizer.com
- Clicktale.com
Questions to readers:
- Do you use any tools I haven't tried?
- Do you have any insight into your testing methods?
Leave a Comment
Allan loves his family more than breathing. He lives in Panama City, Florida & grew up washing cars at his family's car washes. Oh and Allan hasn't worn underwear since 2004.
6 Comments
Love the way this blog is formatted. Questions to readers is genius. Short, quick, and even applicable for a wordpress user like myself who is not a site developer in the least. But these things apply to anyone communicating anything. Great blog.
Allan, thanks for including Sunnytrail in the list :-) I’m available to anyone has questions about the service at the following email address: http://scr.im/sunnytrail
A/B testing is great, but one trick is to perform incremental changes so you get narrow down what worked and what didn’t. And make sure there aren’t any outside factors that might effect a conversion (like how the person came to your page i.e. referral, was it from an ad, or a review like on this post etc).
Just came to say the Ninja Button link has double .com.com
http://www.feedbackarmy.com/ gets 10 reviews from customers for $15, you can ask them specific questions. Users get paid for the review so they tend to be pretty decent answers to specific questions, although the feedback does tend to skew positive as reviewers are getting paid.
I’ve also used SurveyGizmo to send out detailed questionnaires (with a prize draw) to sites with large subscription bases.
Clicktale is impressive, but kind of pricey.
Do you guys tend to purchase ongoing subscriptions for the tools mentioned, buy them for a short project, or rely on the free versions?
Hi Allan,
Love it if you would give Reedge.com a try. Its nice for testing based in historical data. For example: test users that are already clients or test users that visited the contact page but never contact you…
Anyway interesting for a/b testing inside your apps as well…
Love to hear from you, you got my email I guess… with this comment
Dennis