Product Price Point Testing Using Google Website Optimizer

I've just launch my first price point test using G OPtimizer and a new clickbank product. Here is how I did it:

First, I setup 2 addional CB products which are actually the same product just different prices. I use DLGuard download manager so I had to do the same thing there, point to the new CB product numbers for each price point.

The three price points are 22.00, 12.99, and 9.00.

The object is to determine which combination of volume x price creates the best revenue stream (expenses are the same for all three price points).

In Optimizer, I sectioned off (for those new to this blog see my terms post here) the portion of the sales page that had buy links and the price stated.

I use a link > redirect to help organize my buy link so I created 2 more of them (/buy.htm, buy9.htm, buy12.htm) so each one refreshed to the appropriate CB download link I created in DLGuard. For those not using DLGuard, you would simply put your different product link associated with each price point on the different pages. This can also be done directly in the variants if you use a direct buy link.

The variants each sectioned off three links to purchase: the buy now button, the image of the ebook cover, and the "buy right now" text. You can see it here:Buying a Mattress.

Thats it. All incoming traffic (see here for post explaining what traffic Google Optimizer measures)will be divided up among the three prices...and eventually we'll see a clear winner.


meegwell

Website Optimizer: What Traffic Does it Track? What Kind of Test is it?

I've seen these questions come up on various boards and such:

What traffic does Google Optimizer track? Does it only track AdWords?

Google Optimizer tracks and does the multivariant testing on all incoming traffic, regardless of source. You need an AdWords account because all the tracking and G analytics horsepower is housed within AdWords - Google Optimizer leverages off of this...why reinvent the wheel?


What Type of Testing Does it Do? (Taguchi, A/B, etc)

I've seen a lot of misinformation on this topic. Particularly around Taguchi - it seems that a lot of folks in the Internet Marketing world are a bit confused here.

Here is quick explanation:

Factorial Experiments allow you to test multiple 'factors' with multiple 'choices'. For example, a factor could be an image on a landing page and a choice would be various images being swapped.

Now, outside of automated efficient electronic type of testing, such as testing physical operations like machines or chemicals, the tests become very expensive with the more factors and choices you add. Remember permutations? The possible number of combinations expands greatly with each new factor and choice of factor.

So, we have "Fractional Factorials" which in a nut shell limit the amount of total combinations via statistics needed to get a meaningful result. Taguchi is a form of fractional factorial experiments.

So back to the web - It costs nothing more to do 10 factors with 20 choices then it does to do 2 factors with 2 choices....so there is no need for a fractional method like Taguchi.

Google Optimizer uses a full factorial method, where the factors are the "test sections" and the choices are the "variants" on a given experiment page.


Hope this helps,

Meegwell

Landing Page Experiment: A Full Site Test!

My first test is still running fine and I'll get back to that one when more data has come in. Unlike that first test, which was simply swapping out some variations of different sales page elements, my second test was much more involved!

I just finished launching the second test, and quite frankly I'm a little nervous given all the changes that were involved. Here's the scenario:

This test became so involved I'm going to post the links to the new and old so you can get a feel for yourselves.

I wanted to change a the landing page of an old site of mine. The site sells a book that teaches professional valuation techniques, applied to websites. It was one of my first projects and is a small technical niche - kind of a "near the heart" thing and not so much for the sales.

The plan was to incorporate the sales page into the landing page, and eliminate some of the paths that needed to be taken before a visitor is presented with the option to buy the book. The problem is those paths were many, and in order to keep a good amount of information (like table of contents samples), many pages had to be duplicated and re-designed since the sales page was now the index (those other pages had links to the old sales page location). Can you picture this mess?

So I did it. I created the new landing pages, cut out a bunch of the duplicate links and paths, and just left the table of cocntents samples. For each sampl, I built a new page that sent the visitor back to the index, so they dont end up at what was the old sales page.

This basically creates a whole new site - the content being the same, but the whole navigation system is different...Im sure I screwed something up I'll catch tomorrow.

Problems and tips: these were o' plenty - but it's a bit late now so Im going to post details tomorrow. For now, I've setup the 'old' and the 'new' in a separate directory and kept all the linking for each as if Google Website Optimizer brought you to each page.

The old, original index was this: Original



The new index, and site navigatio and sample pages is here: New Variant




note: In order to put this "original" out there, I had to remove all Google Optimizer coding.

Like I said, I'll dive into the details of actually creating this test tomorrow...