Something strange happens when you start paying for traffic.

You question how hard your dollar is working.

Most people start by questioning the efficiency of the traffic source. And, they also stop there.

If an ad on site XYZ doesn’t convert, we blame the source.

That could be far from the truth. Your source could be bringing you quality traffic but your landing pages drop the ball big time. The only real way to know if your source, pages and offers are working is to… wait for it… Test.

Here comes the but… if you don’t know what to test, it can make you throw your hands in the air, and say – Argh! I’ll deal with it later. Of course, later never comes. I should know.

Time to get intentional. Something I’m personally determined to do. My first step is to create a list of items to track and test. I’ve laid them down below. Hopefully this list will be helpful for you too.

Usability

Before slapping on stuff to test, why not first find out what people are looking at, clicking on, and doing on specific pages. Since the most important things are – new leads and new sales, it’s only logical to track:

• Dedicated landing pages
• First blog screen with opt-in sidebar
• Sales pages

CrazyEgg is a good free tool to use for this. Another one with a different approach is the 5 Second Test. Once there is some data to work with, it’s easier to figure out which areas to start tweaking and testing.

Contact Link / Button

This is particularly of important to service providers. You want people to contact you. Wouldn’t you stand a better chance if your contact link is clicked more often?

Things to try:

• Different button text, color, icons and styles
• Not using buttons but your photo

Contact Or Quote Request Form

If you’re a service provider, you’ll want people to follow through and submit the form. So testing your form conversions make sense.

Things to try:

• Form label placement
• Label text. E.g. My name vs Enter your name
• Submit button text. E.g. Register for webinar vs Sign Up

Social Media Links / Buttons

There are two types of social media buttons. Share links and profile links. Some tests have shown share links on sales pages don’t do much for you and could actually result in lower order sizes. I’ve also found that share buttons can reduce your site speed. Don’t take my word for it. Something to test for sure.

Landing Page Headline

This is among the first things most of us try and for good reason. The headline is the one thing that makes people stay or leave.

Things to try:

• Different copy
• Different fonts, size, color
• Different line widths

Opt-In Forms

Most of us have very typical opt-in forms on our sidebars. Me too! I have a cover graphic because I heard that’s a good thing to have. But does it ring true?

Things to try:

• With and without cover images
• Different images instead of covers. E.g. Lifestyle, your own photo
• Form label placement, copy and color
• Form buttons, in particular the copy
• Amount of information collected. E.g. With and without name, with option to indicate preferences or without.
• Different opt-in offers

Trust Seals

We’ve been told over and over trust seals give people greater confidence. It makes sense, but where’s the right place to put this seal? On a blog that does not sell products. Would having an SSL and placing a SSL verification seal make a difference?

Navigation Links

This I’ve never thought about and most of us never change our navigation links, perhaps not wanting to confuse our regular visitors. On the other token, few people truly remember the navigation of a majority of sites they visit. Unless it’s somewhere people spend a lot of time like Facebook or web apps.

Things to try:

• Using different copy
• Changing the position of the one link you want people to visit
• Highlighting the one link you want people to visit

Pricing Presentation

Today’s popular method of displaying various price options is by using a pricing table. Not all are created alike though. Some pricing tables lack information to make the plans easy to compare. That could work against you, or not. Also, how are you wording your price to make it more appealing?

Things to try: – With or without feature breakdown on each table to show the difference between plans – The order of your prices. Low to high, high to low or feature the best plan out of order – Price framing. E.g. $300/year vs $15/month (paid yearly)

Pricing

Closely related to the above, which doesn’t require you to change your price. Are you selling at optimal price? Many of us price based on what we think we should get or like to earn. Nothing wrong with that but are there small price changes or even in the packaging that could result in better conversions?

Testimonials

Another one of those things we put up because we’ve heard it helps. Do they?

Things to try:

• Testimonials on opt-in pages
• Regular testimonials vs those taken from social media
• Placement of testimonials
• Relevance of testimonials to the benefit described on your sales page e.g. If you have a testimonial about XYZ feature of your product, would placing it close or next to the part where you explain that feature make the page better?

Videos

You’ll find lots of statistics about conversion and videos. That’s why there are tons of video tools out there now.

Things to try:

• Opt-in or sales pages with or without video
• Autoplay or not (I know, I know)
• More videos or only one?

These should keep us busy for a while. Truth is, every one of us can benefit from better pages. Even if you don’t pay for traffic, I bet you do a lot of leg work to get the traffic you have. So why not make the most of your hard work?

What are you testing today?