When To Test: The Importance of Primary Conversion Goals

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Jeanne Hopkins
Jeanne Hopkins

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a/b testing, primary conversion goals, internet marketing campaigns One of our HubSpot customers was in the process of updating their home page. And they were at an impasse between two different home pages. One stressed the type of product and the other stressed the value proposition. That’s not to say the value proposition was left out of the “product” page; it was just minimized. 

What to do?

I told them there’s only one thing to do – test. They replied, “Test what?” and I responded, “Good question.”

When testing landing or home pages perhaps the most important thing to do is determine your goals. What do you most want people to do when they land on your web page? Do you just want their email address or do you want them to sign up for a free trial? Are you looking for quantity of leads or leads that end up buying? These are important criteria that need to be agreed upon before you begin the testing phase.

Our friend Anne Holland from WhichTestWon? talks about Primary Conversion Goals. She says that most sites have multiple conversion goals. You can download a whitepaper, opt-in for a newsletter, or try a free trial – all on the same page. I’m sure you’ve seen many home pages that offer at least this much. Anne says that before you begin any tests, you need to reach agreement about what the primary goal is, as well as the secondary or tertiary goals. Without this agreement, your tests will fail because you won’t know what you’re optimizing for.

So what is your primary conversion goal for your home page? Look carefully at all of the opt-in boxes and follow their trail to see if they lead to what you really want or need. Then if you come to a consensus, take the next step and figure out what web pages are worth testing. We can help you with that with our live webinar and special report “What’s Worth A/B Testing.”Be sure to join Anne Holland and HubSpots’s Mike Volpe on September 30 as they discuss (using real-life tests) which pages are worth testing, what copy and design gets you high impact test results and how much traffic you need for conclusive test results.


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