Several years back I created Easy Split Test for marketers who want to improve their sales copy.

A split test is where you send one page’s traffic to two pieces of copy and calculate which page converts best. Afterwards you stop showing the loser and begin a new test with the winner and a new slightly modified version of it.

One myth is that there must only be ONE difference between the two pieces of copy to have a valid test. That’s not true at all, and marketers have been doing the exact opposite for decades.

Businesses often enlist copywriters to write copy to challenge their control piece.

They may have copy that has been running for years and converting a solid 2%, but they want to see if that copy can be beaten. So a copywriter writes an entirely different ad for the same product to see which ad converts better.

That’s a valid split test.

The only problem that may arrive is in the conclusions you may draw from the test.

If the control ad has a red headline and the challenger has a blue headline, you could not conclude which headline color converts best from the test unless that was the ONLY difference between the two ads.

So if the the control and the challenger are completely different ads, you will not find out the answer to small questions like which order button, background or font works best. But you CAN find out which ad converts best – and that’s useful information.

Once you know which ad converts best, you can begin slightly modifying the winner and testing it against itself to find out the smaller questions – like which order button converts best.

Another mistake is thinking you need a certain number of actions before you stop a test.

That can be a good rule of thumb, especially for offline marketers who struggle using a computer, but now there are calculators that can do the complicated mathematical formulas for you.

One such complicated mathematical formula is the Chi Square test. This test can predict which version will be the winner from surprisingly low amounts of data, so it doesn’t take as long to run a test. (Which is great when you want to optimize a sales letter fast.)

Easy Split Test has the Chi Square test programmed in to it, so you’ll be notified when your test hits 95% confidence.

And you can search google for “Chi Square calculator” to discover the statistical confidence of any test you’re currently running.

Either way, the marketers who are #WINNING are split testing. Go ready spaghetti and get to work!

Please, don’t call a doctor just yet.

Sure, I may be the last person you expected to downplay the role of testing in copywriting. After all, I’m the copywriter who tests before, during and after writing copy for clients.

And EVEN I am a bit hesitant to say this publicly, as I do think more people need to be testing their sales copy.

But there’s something I’ve noticed going on in some of the Internet Marketing forums that I frequent. Specifically the Warrior Forum.

People ask for advice on a specific strategy, tactic, technique or what have you… and instead of getting valuable feedback, they hear a loud echo: “You need to test!”

While that response is better than a large number of respondents who chime in with their untested opinions. It’s also a response I find troublesome.

So I replied…

Sometimes I fear “You need to test” has become just a different way to say “I don’t know.”

Indeed, “You need to test” has become a cop out.

Yes, I believe everything should be up for a test at all times when reasonable.

But that doesn’t mean you start with two random variables and pit them against each other to see which comes out on top. There’s a better way.

In that warrior forum thread I likened this to waiting on a room full of typing monkeys to perfectly replicate Shakespeare. It may technically happen at some point, but it’s the long… even wrong way to go about it.

Instead of testing two random variables, you should start with a proven, successful model and start testing different variables from there.

And if that’s what you do, then asking others for “what works” deserves a better response than stopping the conversation with the call to ‘test it’ yourself.

In conclusion, I think responding with “You need to test” can actually be the WRONG answer when you can find plenty of evidence already pointing in one direction if you choose to look.

And while testing may always be the final answer, modeling success should often be the first step.

If you’re not currently testing your sales copy, get on it! I suggest either using Easy Split Test, Google Analytics or, my favorite, Muvar which comes free as a bonus at this link.

Then try setting up these quick 10 tests.

1. Try removing your PS’s or applying my rules to your PS’s.

2. Try a blue gradient background.

3. Try using the Ultimate Submit Button or the Belcher Button.

4. Try removing any language or dead giveaways from the top of your sales letter that tips the reader off that you are selling a product/service. (An obvious example would be an order button.)

5. Try removing the first 3-5 paragraphs from your copy. Often when you write, the first few paragraphs can be awkward before you’ve warmed up and reached your “zone.”

6. Try making your body text and your margins (top, bottom, left and right) larger.

7. Try a new headline. Maybe one that starts with “Discover,” “Amazingly Simple Method For…” or that comes across as “newsy,” like you might see on the front page of a newspaper.

8. Try adding new audio or video to the top of your sales page, that starts immediately after the page loads.

9. Try rewriting your subheads so that if you deleted all the body text, the reader would still understand the core ideas of the copy.

10. Try adding stock photography. Maybe under the headline or when Screaming For Attention.

Recently I was hired to do a rewrite for a client’s sales copy that wasn’t converting.

Before I got started I decided to set up tracking software to see how his copy was converting… AND see where his traffic was coming from.

Remember, last month I wrote a post about how traffic sources affect conversions. The idea is that different traffic sources can affect conversion rates BIG TIME.

Some sources of traffic will convert MUCH BETTER than others, to the same sales copy. (A member of my Copy Mentorship recently discovered this as well. We discussed it in the latest Q&A session.)

Because of this, I’m more interested in knowing the conversion rates from individual traffic sources than just the overall conversion rate.

Now that the test has been running for more than a week, I can see that the biggest source of traffic is from traffic exchanges and other very low-targeted traffic sources.

If you just excluded these low quality traffic sources, the overall conversion rate would double. That says a lot.

So now when I rewrite the copy, I’ll be able to better judge the success of the letter by excluding the traffic sources that don’t really pick up any sales. In fact, I’ll probably ONLY compare conversion rates from traffic sources that made at least one sale.

To track conversion rate by traffic source, I use Muvar. (Although it now looks like Testivar might be the new name for the software.)

If you’re working to get your conversion rate up, I recommend using software like Muvar to help you discover your true conversion rate… AND to tell you something about your customers. But I’ll get to that in another post.