Using Pay per Click to Split-Test Web Site Designs

If you've read many of our blog posts or articles, you know one of our principle tenets is that it is impossible to predict user behavior, so the only way to know what web site design will generate the most leads for your firm is to test them. Paid search makes this process easy.

Using pay per click ads, you can send an equal amount of traffic to two different landing pages, each with a different design, to measure the performance of each one. For this to work, each landing page needs its own form or other conversion event in order to be able to generate a conversion rate with which to compare the two pages.

For example, let's say you do this and generate the following data:

Landing Page 1Conversion Rate: 1.45%
Landing Page 2Conversion Rate: .63%

In this case, landing page 1 has a much better conversion rate, so it has the more effective design. You could continue this process, testing this page against other designs, or just go ahead and declare the design a winner and use it for your entire site. This is invaluable information that will greatly improve the performance of your online marketing.