MindValley Labs Internet Marketing Blog

It is all too easy to just stop test­ing. After all, run­ning split test after split test can get pretty tire­some. How­ever, that gives all of us that have a pas­sion for met­rics and test­ing a huge leg up because it is a proven way to leave your com­peti­tors behind.
Here is another exam­ple of a suc­cess­ful test that we ran. All we tested was a slight change in the copy of the head­line. Ini­tially, I came up with the “los­ing head­line” because I thought it would be the clear win­ner. How­ever, the test proved me wrong and showed that the “win­ning head­line” out­per­formed the “los­ing head­line” by a huge margin.

The most amaz­ing thing of this head­line test is the dif­fer­ence. I would have never guessed that the cus­tomer response could dif­fer by over 50% given the small change.

Win­ning Version:

Los­ing Version:

Test Results:

Why did the first head­line do so much bet­ter? For that, you might have to ask an expert copy­writer. The first tac­tics leads in with Armand Morin and also talks about other experts which prob­a­bly peaks a lot more read­ers inter­ests than read­ing about software.

So, while test­ing can indeed get tedious, keep it up and you will sure be happy you did once you are sip­ping are lying on a beach some­where in the trop­ics just work­ing a few hours per day while all those other lazy fools keep slav­ing away.

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About the Author

Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype. Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.

Check out other posts by Mike Reining

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