To Test or Not to Test?

You’ve just performed a website redesign, and your landing page conversion rates have dropped through the floor. You’ve got several ideas regarding what the cause might be: the new call to action button should be orange, not red; the headline should be larger; and the navigation bar across the top should be moved to the side. You tell your design crew to start tweaking, anxious to get those rates back up where they should be.

Stop. Rewind. Reconsider.

You’ve neglected the most important aspect of any landing page redesign: testing. Landing page testing should take place on a continual basis and ideally should be the driving force behind any changes you make before you plan a page redesign. Even if you’ve already completed your design, though, you should use landing page testing to tell you how to optimize that page before you start tweaking things, particularly if you’ve see a disturbing drop in your conversion rates.

The Case for Testing

Landing page testing can give you concrete data that will tell you what elements of your website are working well and which ones are causing conversion leaks. You’ll always have in your mind an idea of which changes are “good ideas” and which ones are “not so good ideas.” You might be tempted to immediately start tweaking the “not so good ideas” if you see a drop in conversion rates. But remember this: your evaluation of an idea as good or not so good might be completely different from the ideas in the minds of your visitors.

How Testing Can Pinpoint the Problem

Let’s say you redesign four elements on your landing page: you change the call to action button color, you alter your headline format, you move your navigation bar, and you add a “Print Coupon” button.

In your mind, the “Print Coupon” button should bring more conversions, since viewers will have an added incentive for completing the purchase. But what if your “Print Coupon” button is dominating the page and visitors are not “seeing” the call to action?

Landing page testing can show you that it’s not button color, headline format, or navigation bar placement that have caused the drop in conversion rates, but rather that your “Print Coupon” button is causing visitors to leave without ever clicking the call to action.

If you don’t test, you’ll be stuck guessing at the right button color without ever realizing that the true cause of the problem lies somewhere else entirely.