Tag Archives: optimization

GTmetrix: This Is Your Site On SPEED

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It has been mentioned before on this blog that landing page loading time matters. Each precious second that you shave can mean more dollars in your pocket. I always thought that I did a pretty good job of keeping my landing pages fast. I used small, optimized images, had a good server, etc. But that was before my friend Rohail introduced me to GTmetrix.

I was skeptical at first, but it looked simple enough to try. All you need to do is put in your landing page URL and press go. So I did. GTmetrix analyzed my site in a few seconds, and it came back with a grade of C- for my page. I was surprised, since I thought it was loading pretty quick at 1.5 seconds. But the truly amazing thing about GTmetrix is how much detail they give you about how to speed up your site. They have it all laid out from the top factors affecting your speed down to the smallest ones. And everything that they suggest comes with more info about how to do it. For example, one of the suggestions for my site was to minify the javascript files I was using. All I had to do was click on the links for the minified code that it generated for me, replace my code with it, and upload it to my server. It took about 30 seconds to complete. They’ve also got a lossless image optimizer built in. If your images are too big, just download the optimized versions and upload them to your server. Simple. When I was done completing the high priority tasks that GTmetrix suggested, I re-tested the page. I was blown away! The load time was now down to 0.6 seconds. A few simple tweaks had cut my loading time in half, and then some.

GTmetrix Screen Shot

Looks like I’ve got some optimizing to do on this blog…

So how much does this tool cost? Absolutely nothing. It’s free. Bookmark it now and do yourself a favor. I use it on every single lander I do now, and it continues to amaze me how quick my landers are loading. If you take the time to read the info on how each tweak actually works, you will learn a great deal about better coding and web server best practices as well. I can’t recommend this site enough, and thanks again to Rohail for turning me on to it!

How to Strategically Create and Optimize Landing Pages

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This is a guest post by Danny Schwartz, lead designer at landing page design team WePixelate.

As a landing page designer and former affiliate, I’ve got the best of both worlds and a ton of knowledge when it comes to creating and optimizing landing pages for conversions.

One thing I’ve come across time and time again in the affiliate industry is that unlike traffic sources, people tend to not approach landing pages and optimizing with a degree of strategy. Perhaps this is because people in general tend to look towards increasing traffic to increase profits rather then optimizing landing pages, or perhaps it’s because there doesn’t seem to be an exact logical path one can take when designing landing pages to ensure that they achieve the maximum level of potential they possibly can.

People tend to approach landing page optimization and creation with the mindset of “oh, I’ll just change out that call to action there” and “hmm, let me try a pink background instead of white”, essentially it’s an approach which favors tracking random elements, as oppose to tracking elements that have a logical basis for being changed.

What do I mean by this? I mean start thinking strategically about which elements are going to have the biggest impact on your conversions, and change them, not the color of some random icon on your page.

Here’s a little insight kind of steps I take to create and optimize landing pages for my clients. I will be throwing in an example of a dating website for a campaign that is specifically targeted towards males that are between 30 – 35 for a Facebook campaign.

  • Create 6 or so completely different styles of landing page, that all deliver exactly the same message, for example “Free exclusive account, only 1 left, find your match now” with a description of the account they will be getting. One page may for example contain a picture of a 30 year old professional kind of guy making out with a similar girl, another may contain a set of pictures of girls who are “using this service”, another will have a picture of a really sexy girl lying down, each page having a different call to action and fonts and what not. Point being, each page is drastically different, with the only similarity being the message.
  • Once my client has tested each one to a reasonable standard, e.g. 100 clicks, I then take the best converting page and change out the message that’s delivered to the visitor, taking the offer they’re looking for and spinning it into a different perspective, so for example I’ll have “We’ve got the kind of women you’ve only dreamed of” or “Women so sexy that you won’t need to Facebook stalk people any more” or “Over 1,273 people have found their perfect woman”. Point is again, drastic differences so that differences can really be felt.
  • My client then tests each new page to a reasonable standard, e.g. 100 clicks and tells me which one is converting the best. I then take that page begin changing smaller elements and working with the client to do back and forth tests, until we reach a point where continuing to optimize is no longer worth mine or my clients time, e.g. where any changes are too small to make any significant impact.

This is what I define is a strategic way to create and optimize pages. Unfortunately, being affiliates, there’s a certain “peak” level, where optimization becomes ineffective due to merchant landing pages play a significant if not, the most important role in attaining those conversions. Pre-selling and pushing visitors to make a purchase or fill in a lead form is one thing, but ultimately, it depends on the merchant to secure that lead or sale.

You Can Do Better Than That

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If you have worked and worked and finally got your first campaign profitable, congratulations!  Now it’s time to work some more.  You might think that just because you have made more money than you spent for the first time, you can sit on your butt and profit.  That’s one option, but that’s not the one that you should take.  You can do better than that.

Now it’s time to optimize that campaign.  What’s that you say?  It took optimization to get it profitable in the first place?  That’s great.  But now it’s time to optimize it some more.  If you are direct linking, it’s time to test out a landing page.  If you already have a landing page, it’s time to change up some elements on your page, or create a new page altogether.  I don’t care how much ROI you are getting on that campaign.  You can do better than that.

Key To Success

Little things matter.  On your landing pages, the color of the buttons matters.  The little picture in the corner matters.  The headline matters.  The body copy matters.  Also, test out a completely different look and feel on your landing page.  Start from scratch and do a new one with a completely different design style and concept.  Test this against the one that is already working.  If you are making money, don’t send all of your traffic to it, or even 50%.  Test it small with 10%-20% of your traffic.  If it beats your main offer (the “control”), then you swap it in and start the process all over.

One of the big things that separates the Super Affiliates from the little guys is that they spend a lot of time continuously working on their campaigns that are already making money.  Think about it, would you rather spend time getting more money out of a campaign that is already performing, or testing out 10 new ones to find that one that is going to make money at all?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should never test out new campaigns.  You don’t want to have all your eggs in the same basket either.  What I am saying is that no matter how well your campaign is doing, you can do better than that.

Go get it.

Testing Offers 101: From Red to Green

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One of the toughest ongoing questions for affiliate marketers is, “How do I know when I’ve spent enough money testing an offer?”  Everybody has a different approach. There are a couple of truths that we need to look at.

  1. It is very rare to find a campaign that is profitable right out of the gate. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, because it does, but it is very rare. In most cases you will need to test, optimize, test, optimize, then test some more before you really get it dialed in and profiting enough to make it worthwhile.
  2. Some campaigns will not work no matter how much testing and optimizing you do. There is nothing more frustrating than beating a dead horse.

Sound like a Catch 22? It all boils down to your tolerance for pain, or your willingness to lose (or I like to say “invest”) money in a campaign before it sees a profit. How do you test properly without blowing too much money, and still avoid dropping potentially profitable campaigns too early? Here’s what I like to do…

First of all, when you setup a campaign, you want to spend about 2x to 3x the payout of the offer for the initial test. If the offer payout is $5, then you want to spend approximately $10 – $15 on the initial test phase. This is the “gathering data” phase.

Stats

Green is good

Once you have done this, you will have some data to work with (assuming you’ve been tracking everything, with Tracking202 or a similar program). Here’s the type of questions you want to ask in order to evaluate your data:

Did it get any conversions at all? If so, what keywords / urls / referrers / ad copies / banners were they from? Did you make a profit? Would it be profitable if you bid on less keywords? Would it be profitable if you bid on more keywords for a cheaper price? The list goes on, but these questions should give you a start.

For me personally, after the initial testing phase, if I haven’t received any conversions at all, I usually dump the campaign. That’s -100% ROI, and that’s going to be hard to overcome without a drastically different strategy, and it’s probably not worth it. If you are anywhere from -50% ROI to 0% ROI, then you might be able to profit with optimization. Try using a landing page or direct linking (whichever you didn’t do the first time), try different ad copies, pictures, headlines, calls to action, etc. Use the data from the test to see what is working and what is not working.

However you got those conversions in the testing phase, focus on that precise set of circumstances and recreate them in greater volume. Once you understand how and why you got some conversions, you are well on your way to having an optimized and profitable campaign.

Now go make some money!