Can You Afford Not To Split Test Your Copy?

OK. OK, you've written the first draft of your sales letter and put it on your website. Or it could be that you've done your testing the traditional way and physically mailed it to your list.

You've had the results and they're sort of "all right". But nothing to write home about.

What occurs next? Should you knock the project on the head? Go with it? Or you could tear your copy apart and rewrite some or all of it to improve your response?

The most profitable answer is that you need to work on your sales copy. Which is where split testing comes in. If all you do is change something without split testing, then you have no way of knowing whether or not your changes worked for you or against you.

If you've been involved in mail order, you will remember that split testing literally involved splitting your list in two. 50% of your list would get version one and the other half of your list would get the second test. Being sure to only change one thing at a time, otherwise you won't know which "thing" worked or didn't work.

Begin by testing your headline - it's the most important part of your sales letter. It's impossible to know whether your headline is a world beater until you've pitched it against a different one. Keep testing and testing.

The internet allows you to test things like your headline very quickly and simply. Upload two different copies of your sales pitch (probably called something imaginative like index1 and index2). Log and analyze which version brings in more orders.

Once you've got a handle on this, it's time to test again. Either by testing a different headline or maybe a differnt variable entirely. Possibly your guarantee (assuming you offer one). Remember to test your headline color. Possibly the price tag you've put on your product. And remember to test a higher price as well as your first instinct of cutting the price. Sometimes higher prices get the same - or even more - orders, or they may just earn you more money.

One way to speed up the testing is to use specialist testing software. This lets you test lots of different variables and applies some scary math (that you fortunately don't need to know about) to quickly home in on your best split test. You can find this split testing software here.