The 80/20 (Pareto) Principle states that in any system, about 80% of results come from 20% of efforts. This also means 80% of efforts produces just 20% of results. One of the hardest parts about getting started with traffic generation for a new web business, is you often don't know which traffic generation methods will work best for you, i.e. the 20% efforts that will bring you 80% results. It's not enough to learn the methods, apply and expect to get the same results as someone else - what works for one person & their website may not work at all for you & your website. Instead, you need to learn about the best proven methods & select a few you want to start out with. WHAT TO TEST There are two main areas you want to test: 1. TRAFFIC GENERATION METHOD Traffic methods include things like SEO, Google PPC, classified ads, article marketing & content syndication, social media, etc. You need to give enough time & focus to study & master each method you implement. It may take you several shots at it to learn how to do it in the right way, which is fine, as long as you commit to learning & improving with each one. Doing the same thing over and over if it's not bringing you favourable results, without making any improvements, is a waste of time. Once you determine which traffic methods are working best for you, focus on doing more of those methods and optimising the elements within those methods. 2. ELEMENTS WITHIN TRAFFIC GENERATION METHOD For every traffic method, there are elements within that you can change to improve its effectiveness. For example, in Google PPC ads, you can change the keywords, headline, body, URL extension, geographic location to display, CPC, etc. HOW TO TEST The key is SPLIT-TESTING. This involves running a second version against your first version with the aim of beating the first's results. Once you find a version that works better than the first, this becomes your new first, and you then work to beat that with another version. It's a continuous process of testing & improvement. Eventually, you'll find a version that you can't beat, in which case you keep using it and test/optimise another traffic gen method. When you find a traffic method that works well, avoid making loads of changes all at once to optimise it. You want to test one thing at a time where possible and see if that has a favourable impact. The danger with changing multiple things at once when optimising is you won't know what was the most important factor(s) that impacted its effectiveness, e.g. With a classified ad, was it the city change, headline change, or the change of the body of the ad? A change on one element may improve it, whilst something else may worsen it. WHY TRACK TRAFFIC & SOURCES OF TRAFFIC? The only way to know what's effective for you & your website is by looking at the traffic numbers. Unless you can see which methods are the biggest sources of traffic, you won't know which methods are giving you the best return on investment (time and/or money), which you will want to optimise, and which ones to drop completely. Tracking your traffic helps you to make better decisions for how best to use your time & resources for maximum impact. So, make sure you have Google Analytics or some other analytics installed on every site you're driving traffic to. Check your stats each day to see what's working for you & what's not. Eliminate what's not working & optimise/do more of what is working best. To Your Online Success! David
Absolutely testing can literally make or break your business! Focusing on conversions is very important in once you start driving that traffic to your offers and squeeze pages.