Webmasters and small program owners: remember to do optimization tests
 

Try out different designs, switch around and modify specific design elements, and track conversion/clickthrough differences for all changes.

Unless you already have the perfect design, simply experimenting a bit, comparing the results and optimizing based on those results will usually net you 10-30% higher profits for any given site.

It's been bugging me for a while how few of the smaller webmasters and programs appear to be doing this, especially because it's been standard practice in large parts of mainstream for years now.

Simply buying a nice-looking design is not enough, you need to experiment and optimize to get results :warning

The reason people dont do it is simply that if they dont have a designer on staff, every design is a few hundred bucks

this will sound like spam... but for my clients I do minor design changes at no cost for this very reason. If design 1 doesn't do well or they want to test out something on the design I have no problem helping out for free. I'd rather have happy clients than a few extra bucks

I agree!

This goes beyond a design of a site though. This extends to every aspect in marketing.

For example... on one of my personal sites I had a flash ad up that was kick ass and should have done well but had a very low CTR. I changed it to a row of thumbs and the CTR went up about 600%.... I almost fell out of my chair.

What might work with some surfers... won't work with others. You have to know your traffic to maximize the profit potential.

It's not about how much traffic you have... it's about converting the traffic you do have.

If a site makes more than $10k over the years (which most should), trying different designs and design elements will bring in $2k+ over the years (assuming an average benefit of 20% higher profits - which is around what I usually achieve by optimization). That should easily pay for some testing.

On somewhat bigger sites, the testing will usually pay for itself in weeks or even days.

And remember, most testing does not require elaborate design changes. Much consists of switching around specific pieces of text, moving ads around a bit, rearranging the places you present links to popular or related content, etc.

Personally, I think every paysite should try at least 3 different full designs, with a small number of variations per design. The difference it can make is so incredibly big that it's almost irresponsible not to do it.

:2 cents:

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