Mixergy: Optimizely’s Founder Gives Optimization Techniques You Can Implement Right Now

I did a fun interview with Andrew Warner of Mixergy and shared a few tips about how to get started with A/B testing:

Dan: Yeah. Well, the first simplest thing I’ll say focus on the one thing you want somebody to do on that page. Once you’ve identified that one thing, remove almost everything else. Try a variation of your page, which is focused entirely on that one thing you want them to do, on our home page it would be enter your URL, click get started. On your page, it might be entering, clicking the banner at the top of the page and getting people to sign up. Whatever that one thing that you really want them to do, focus in on that and remove almost everything else, remove especially copy, remove images, remove text and start from that. Start with a very dramatically sparse page, and that’s a great starting point because what that’ll show you is the impact of all the stuff you think helps, all of these great screen shots or links to show that you were on the New York Times and all that stuff, maybe that’s actually distracting people from what they should really be focusing on, which is the one call to action you have on your page. I would say that’s my best recommendation for a good place to get started. And once you’ve done that, you’ve traversed this local maximum problem, you’re now actually at a point where that’s a great part to say, “Now that we have the sparse with the core beginning essentials of what are needed on our landing page, now let’s start adding things to it and see what actually will improve the conversion rate.”