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Alongside any search engine optimisation (SEO) or any of your digital marketing in general, it is important that you have optimised the content of your website to be focused around conversion. What I mean by this is that when a user eventually gets on to your website, they should be presented with content that will encourage them to make a purchase (if the site is an e-commerce website), make an enquiry through a contact form, or some other target that you have for the site (i.e. share the content through social media websites). It can be very surprising what a small change of the way text is worded or the layout of parts of a webpage can actually make to your website’s conversion rate. In order to actually test the effect of a new change, you can use a new feature within Google Analytics called ‘Content Experiments’.

Google Content Experiments

Content Experiments will replace the previous tool that Google developed, ‘Website Optimizer’, which offered very limited functionality. Content Experiments works by creating multiple instances of the same webpage, each with slight variations. Once you have done this, you can set up a ‘goal’ within Google Analytics; for example, a user going through and buying a product on the website. Then, Content Experiments will present the different page variations to users at random and record how many times the goal is achieved on each. This can then be used to compare the conversion rate of each page in order to decide which is the most effective. Not only this, but you can limit the visitors who see the page variations to specific segments, for example, users that have came on the site via a mobile device, in order to see how the specific segments respond to the changes.

The Advantages of Testing

Testing is a crucial part of any web development project. If you were to simply make changes to the website based upon a ‘hunch’ or a ‘gut-feeling’, then it is quite a risk that you are taking. That’s not to say that it couldn’t work, however, if it goes wrong, then you could find yourself in deep water when trying to explain your decision making process.

Another big advantage that using tools such as Content Experiments can hold is that when there are many different opinions regarding the changes that should be made to your website, it can be used to understand which aspects work best. This can be particularly useful in larger organisations, with higher levels of bureaucracy.

Overall though, the main advantage that conversion rate testing holds is the fact that you are able to understand what your users are more responsive to. These findings can then be applied to multiple parts of your online marketing strategy to improve your businesses’ online presence.

For more information on conversion rate optimisation, take a look through our website.