7 Tips for Testing Your Sales and Marketing

One marketing technique may work wonders for someone, but
that doesn't guarantee that it'll do the same for you. The
only way to really know what works for YOUR products and
YOUR target audience is to experiment. Testing and
experimentation are crucial to increasing your profits.

1. Try using the occasional pop-up window to get more
subscribers to your newsletter. Some people *really*
hate these, so use them sparingly. For example, you
could have a window pop up only the first time someone
visits your site ... or you could have one appear
whenever someone leaves your site. Try different
scenarios to see what works best.

2. Change the price of your product and see what impact it
has on sales. Even if your sales drop, you may still
come out ahead when it comes to profits. Note: your
sales may not drop at all; I increased the price of my
own booklet from $12.95 to $19.95 and sales stayed the
same. You never know until you try.

3. Test different sales copy on your website and in your
autoresponder. Should you come on strong, be subtle, be
extremely detailed? Does long sales copy do better than
short copy, or vice versa? Do you get more sales by
spreading your sales copy on multiple pages, or by putting
it all on one page? Be sure to make backups of your
previous work; if you find the new copy kills sales, you
can always restore the previous version.

4. Track your advertising. There are a number of commercially
available ad tracking packages that can help you see which
ads are working well and which aren't. Discard anything
that doesn't work, and try to improve on ads that appear
to work well.

5. Experiment with the navigation of your website. For
example, change the number of clicks required to get to
your ordering page, or change the flow of navigation so
that your visitor always ends up at an ordering page.

6. Test different types of links. You might try short ads
in the margins of your web pages vs. text links within
the context of an article, for example.

7. Test response rates between direct links to your sales
page and the use of a follow-up autoresponder. Sometimes
people just need an extra 'push' or a reminder to order.
(make sure your autoresponder has an easy way for your
prospect to unsubscribe)

About the Author

Angela runs several successful sites
dedicated to helping beginners profit from the Internet.
Her new web magazine, Online Business Basics, features
step-by-step tutorials for eBusiness 'newbies'. To take
the guesswork out of starting and building an Internet
business, click over to http://www.onlinebusinessbasics.com/