The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future

INCREASE  CONVERSION
.  Once  you  have  a  stable  base  of  attention
(whether  measured  in  site  traffic  or  another  way),  you’ll  want  to  look
closely  at  the  conversion  rate:  the  percentage  of  prospects  who  become
customers.  The  classic  way  to  increase  the  conversion  rate  is  through
testing  by  measuring  one  copywriting  attempt  (or  offer,  or  headline,  or
something else) against another and going with the winner.
Traffic → A/B test → compare results
 
 
After you have a winner, you move on to another test, always challenging
the “champion” against another idea. (Google Optimizer allows you to do
this for free.)
This  can  indeed  be  a  good  strategy.  One  tip,  however:  It  may  be  more
important to pay close attention to where customers come from than to what
you can do to convert them once they arrive. “Testing is important, but it
pales  in  comparison  to  the  traffic  source,”  author  and  entrepreneur  Ramit
Sethi  told  me.  “People  love  to  spend  time  split-testing  headlines,  copy,
graphics,  even  tiny  boxes.  They  can  usually  achieve  greater  returns  by
focusing on the source.”