PPC A/B Split Testing for Landing Pages

A/B tests for landing pages allow you to compare the performance of 2 entirely different pages, so you can try out different layouts, move around different sections of the page and change the overall look and feel of the page.

Google’s Website Optimizer makes A/B split testing for landing pages extremely simple.  All you need to do is identify 3 pages:

1. Your control page
2. Your test page
3. Your conversion page

If you have a desired action, such as membership registration, mailing list sign-up, or a sale, indicate the confirmation or thank you page of that transaction as your conversion page.

1.  In the Campaign Management tab, click on the Website Optimizer link.

2. Click on “Get Started

3.  Agree to the User Agreement

4.  Create a new experiment

5.  Enter the page names and urls for each page.Google will automatically verify the urls for those pages.

6.  Click continue and the website optimizer will ask whether you or your webmaster will install the javascript tags onto your experiment pages.

If your web team will install the tags, Website Optimizer then generates a link to the page whereyour webmaster can access the necessary javascript.

If you will install the tags, then you will be taken directly to the page.

7.  Copy the control and tracking scripts and follow the instructions on the page as to where to paste the code in your experiment pages.

8.  When complete, click the Validate pages button, and Google will verify whether the script is correctly installed.

If validation is successful, all you need to do is let the experiment run for 1-2 weeks.  Google will automatically alternate the different landing pages and track their conversion performance. To see how they are doing, go back to the Website Optimizer experiment list by clicking on the Website Optimizer link, and view your report.

[tags]google website optimizer, landing page optimization, testing landing page, ppc, pay-per-click, a/b test, a/b split test, lorna li, lornali[/tags]

Related posts:

1. A/B Split Testing Tips for PPC Ads
2. PPC Conversion Tracking – Get It!
3. PPC Primer for Small, Sustainable Business
4. Social Media Optimization with StumbleUpon

One Response to “PPC A/B Split Testing for Landing Pages”

1. Web Copy Says:
   December 8th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

   Ahh.. been looking for good views about split testing landing pages, I found only a few helpful and free info such as this one.. Thanks for sharing us this info, Creating good landing pages is one of the biggest challenges that I’ve encountered… I don’t want to just create some junk pages ’cause I want to maximize my profits and finding good info like this really means a lot..

   Thanks a bunch, will also add this to our web copy resource list..

   Kudos!

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