In today’s review, I take a look at a new plugin called WP Split Test and as the name implies, this tool helps you set up and track split tests on your WordPress websites.

Overview

WP Split Test is a WordPress plugin which lets easily set up split-tests for posts and pages on a WordPress site. For more information on the point of all this, please check out my Split Testing Basics post.

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Installation and Setup

WP Split Test installs like any other WordPress Plugin and I had no difficulties activating it. Once the plugin is activated, you’ll find a new options tab in your WordPress admin panel, from where you can set up your A/B-tests.

You can set up as many different campaigns as you like and for each campaign, you can create up to four different pages. The pages are created in a simple editor, just like the one used for creating normal WP post. If you prefer, you can compose your pages in an HTML editor and copy-paste them into the WP Split Test editor.

In other words, you have complete freedom in creating your pages. There are absolutely no restrictions imposed by the plugin. Whether you want to test small changes like different titles or different order-button colours or make completely different pages (video sales page vs. text sales page, for example), you can do it using WP Split Test.

Once you’ve created your pages, you simply grab a small code snippet and insert that into a new WordPress post. You don’t need to add anything else but that code snippet to the post. Once it’s published, the plugin will rotate the different pages for each visit to the post.

Check out this video to see the plugin in action, plus a demonstration of the setup process:

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Tracking

Of course, just rotating page variations is only part of the equation for effective split-testing. You also need to be able to track conversion-rates so that you can determine which version of a page is the most profitable one. WP Split Test does click-tracking for your campaigns and interestingly, it tracks clicks within your page contents and also (separately) tracks clicks to your sidebar, navbar and footer contents. For your main page content, you can determine conversion rates simply by checking out the clicks you get to your affiliate link, order button or sign-up button.

Changes can be made on the fly, so if you see that one of your pages is a clear winner, you can give it more weight, deactivate all the other pages or make another minor change within seconds, from the plugin’s admin panel.

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Overall Rating

WP Split Test is a very solid plugin. It couldn’t be easier to install and set up, it rotates pages very cleanly (I like the fact that the URL doesn’t change) and it has no negative impact on page loading times, as far as I can tell.

In my previous post about split-testing, I’ve already expressed how important testing and tracking is for any kind of online money-making venture. You absolutely must do split-testing if you are serious about your online business and if WordPress happens to be your preferred CMS, then WP Split Test is the ideal solution for you.

This is for you, if:

• You like to use WordPress for your sales-pages/squeeze-pages/landing-pages
• You have monetized WordPress blogs or blog-style landing pages
• You are looking for a simple, easy-to-use split-testing solution

This is not for you, if:

• You already have a split-testing solution in place that you are satisfied with

Click the banner below to grab your copy of WP Split Test right now!

(Obligatory disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links. Like for example in the banner above.)

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Split-testing, sometimes also called A/B testing, is the process of testing two or more variations of a webpage against each other in order to determine which one performs better. The goal of split testing is simply to find out how to structure your page so that you can get more clicks, more conversions, more sign-ups or whatever else may be the purpose of the site.

Read on for to learn how and what to test.

How Split Testing Works

Lets begin with a very simple example: We take a hypothetical campaign where we try to get people to sign up to a mailing-list. To run an A/B test, we create two different versions of our squeeze page, one with a blue colour-scheme and the other with a pink colour-scheme.

We will now send our traffic either to a page that serves up one version of the page or the other via some type of script or we will send the to a script that will redirect to one variation of the page or the other. There are different ways to accomplish this on a technical level, but whatever the solution, the result is that 50% of our visitors get to see the pink-themed page and 50% get to see the blue-themed page.

Now, we want to find out which version of our squeeze page gets more sign-ups. To do this, there are again several possibilities, but it always comes down to tracking the source of all our sign-ups or conversions.

Your auto-responder system will almost certainly feature some kind of tracking for this purpose. If you’re measuring click-throughs (to a sales-page or offer), you can track the conversion rates with a tracking system like Tracking202 or similar. You can also set up two separate redirects, one for each of the page-variations, but both pointing to the same sales/offer-page, to see which one of the redirects is used more often.

Again, there’s no shortage of tracking options, but it all comes down to this: Split your traffic evenly between two variations of a page and keep track of which one gets more clicks, sign-ups, sales or whatever it is you’re after.

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What to Test

There are three basic rules to follow when doing split-testing:

1. Test only one variable at a time
   If you change several things on a page and get better conversions as a result, you won’t know what exactly caused the increase in conversions. Was it the new font? The different headline? The new pictures? The only way to know for sure is to only change one thing at a time.
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2. Test big differences first
   Don’t test tiny details as they will rarely make a difference (e.g. exclamation mark vs. period in the headline). Test large, significant variations first.
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3. Keep testing
   Test two variations of a page against each other. When you’ve found the winner, make another variation of that page and test it again. Repeat this process until no change you can think of still produces better conversions. The worst thing you can do in online marketing is not to test. The second worst is to stop testing to early.

Here are some examples of what you can test:

• Text vs. Video
  Have a text-based squeeze-page and test that against one where you read the text and record a slide-show or some other type of video. You could also test video vs. video and text.
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• Long vs. Short
  This goes for text as well as video: Test a long, extensive sales-page against a short one. Test a two-minute video against a 30-minute video.
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• Bullet-Points vs. Paragraphs
  Write out a few paragraphs highlighting the main benefits that come with your product or offer. Then test that against a brief description and bullet-points listing the main benefits.
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• Different Incentives
  Most squeeze-pages offer some type of incentive for signing up, like a free report or something along those lines. If you have more than one incentive at your disposal, test them against each other as well as one against several (remember that too many incentives can make you seem desperate). Also try giving your incentive a more compelling name and/or description.
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• Colour-Themes and Design
  Test a “naked” squeeze-page against one with more graphical elements. Test different colour-schemes against each other. Even fonts and background-colours can make a difference. At the end of the day, you have to make sure that your page is visually appealing to your target demographic otherwise they’ll leave before taking a closer look at it.

Whatever you do, you should be testing your sales-pages and squeeze-pages. For a free solution to create split-tests, check out Google Website Optimizer. If you’re a WordPress user, I’ve got a very interesting for split-testing, a review of which will be published here shortly.

Now go forth, test and prosper.

Cheers,

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Be that as it may, I will still gather useful posts and resources and post them up on a Friday once I’ve found several.

Without further ado, here’s today’s collection:

• Split Testing Calculator
  This is a very simple online tool that has one purpose: To tell you whether your split-testing results are significant yet, or not. When you are split-testing and you don’t want to spend a huge amount of money to get tons of clicks, this tool can help you find the probable winner even with a relatively low number of clicks.
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• CommentLuv Blogs Sorted by Niche
  If you want to promote your blog by doing some blog commenting, then you’ll always welcome the CommentLuv plugin, which shows your latest blog post below your comment. Here’s a list of over 100 CommentLuv blogs, sorted by niche. Just remember to leave relevant, non-spammy comments.
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• Backlinks Explained on BloggerIllustrated
  Allyn Hayne of BloggerIllustrated has changed gears recently and seems to be going in a more newbie-friendly direction. The post linked above contains several, well-made videos covering pretty much all the basics you need to know about backlinks for SEO purposes. Definitely worth checking out!
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• Who Are You Trying to Impress? on Shoemoney
  Best post I’ve ever seen on Shoemoney. Shoe talks about why it doesn’t matter that he tends to get a lot of flak from other IM bloggers and the community in general. Do yourself a favour and give this a read.

And that’s all, folks. Have a great weekend!

Cheers,