Split Testing Using Google Adwords

Reading through this site, you are bound to find out that I am a huge fan of google adwords.

As extremely profitable as their standard services can be, there are some hidden uses of google adwords you should know about. One in particular can help you with split testing your web site's sale pages or pricing.

The Basics Of Split Testing With Adwords

When you have a adword campaign with several different ads, Google automatically rotates the ads for you. That is if you had 3 different ads, google would show each ad 33.33% of the time each.

As one ad gets more people clicking on it than another, google will increase the amount of time that the successful ads run.

After a while you may find that ad #1 is run 80%, ad #2 15% and ad #3 5%. This is the basis for the headline testing tip I gave in this article.

We are going to use google's automatic rotation to our advantage in a different way.

You can use google adwords to send an equal amount of traffic to multiple (different) pages on your site. This will allow you to test which page is selling better.

For example, you can test the price of a product by have three identical pages on your site. Identical that is, except for the price of the product that is. You could name these pages:

www.yoursite.com/offer.htm
www.yoursite.com/specialoffer.htm
www.yoursite.com/limitedtimeoffer.htm

You can set up each of these pages to try pricing your product at $19.95, $29.95, and $39.95 if you wanted.

Here is the trick.

All 3 of your google adwords are going to appear completely identical except for one thing. The only thing that will differ in the ads is the link that you send them to.

Each of your ads would send them to one of the three different pages which you created with the different prices you are testing.

As far as google is concerned, these 3 ads are different because they each go to a different page.

As far as people viewing your ads are concerned, the three ads look completely identical. Because they are identical, statistically they are going to be clicked on with the same frequency.

This helps to ensure that google adwords will rotate all 3 ads equally on their pages.

You now have a system in place to send equal amounts of traffic to 3 separate sales pages to see which one is most successful.

Don't Be Surprised...

Don't be surprised if your lowest price is NOT your best selling price. There are a lot of different psychological factors involved in pricing and people are not always persuaded by the lowest pricing.

Some people equate inexpensive to mean cheap or inferior.

You may find that you do get less sales at a higher price, but in fact you are making more money anyways because of other costs involved.

Tracking Your Results

The most straight forward way to track your results is simply have 3 prices that you are using only for your split test.

You will be able to tell how many sales you made when orders come in for $19.95, $29.95 or $39.95

If one of these prices is what you currently have on your site, then you won't be able to interpret the results for that price. You won't know if they came from google adwords or through other traffic means.

That is unless you choose to track it with google's built in tracking code.

When you are in google, you are given the option of using their tracking conversion tools. You can specify how much each sale is worth on each "thank you for your order" page. You put the individual code on each "thank you page" so that when someone has reached that page after clicking on a google adword, it registers this sale as having come from your adwords.

Google Adword's Conversion Tracking Tool

After several hundred hits have come through your ads, you can evaluate which price was doing the best for you.

Once you have found a winner... keep track of your results and test again!

This time, use the "winning" price as one of the pages (your control page) and try 2 other prices on the other pages. You can keep doing this until a clear winner emerges.

By testing and tracking in this way, you can easily determine your best price for your product.

I plan on doing exactly this for my DVD's which I advertise on adwords. I will share the results with you when I have compiled enough results to evaluate it.

(Speaking of the DVD's... adwords is proving extremely cost effective for selling them. Definitely a very good investment.)