What is Split Testing?

Split testing is a technique that allows you to analyze two different “scenarios” and find out which one is performing more optimally. There are many aspects of a campaign that you can split test and we are going to go into detail with these in this section. Split testing is something that you will want to implement in order to fully optimize your campaign by using statistical data, rather than playing the “guessing game”.

Split Test Ads

Split testing ads is a very good way to help you improve your CTR it is very easy to perform various different split tests within Google Adwords. What you want to do is create two ads within an ad group both having different ad text, but the same destination and display URL’s.

Keyword 1 Ad 1 (different text) Same URL
Keyword 2 Ad 2 (different text) Same URL

You will then want to go to your campaign settings and make sure that your ads are not running “optimized”. This will allow each of your ads to run 50% of the time. If you choose the setting “optimized”, Google will serve your highest performing ad most of the time. For testing purposes, we want a true 50/50 split test to take place so we can easily determine which ad is performing better and quickly obtain the data we need.

Once you have found that you have a “winner” (based on CTR) and can clearly see that one ad is performing better than the other, you can perform the test again. What you want to do is update the under performing (Losing) ad, replace it with a new one, and start the test all over again. If you are constantly split testing ads you will be able to really maximize the effectiveness of your ads and achieve a better CTR.

Note: You should use different ad writing techniques for each ad and we suggest that you give each ad at least 200 impressions for an effective test.

Split Testing Landing Pages

Ad Group 1 Ad 1 Landing Page 1 (unique CB id’s)
Ad Group 1 Ad 1 Landing Page 2 (same but unique CB tracking id’s)

There are two reasons you would want to split test landing pages: to test sales conversions and to test merchant page click-throughs. Both of these tests will give you an idea on how effective your landing pages are performing and will indicate which landing page styles are the highest performing ones.

For example, if you were to want to split test two different landing pages where you are promoting Clickbank products, this can be done very easily. You will need to create two different landing pages that contain two different sets of Clickbank links. You will create one landing page using the one tracking id, and one landing page using a different tracking id.

Sample Clickbank Tracking ID: http://yourid.beatadword.hop.clickbank.net?tid=SomeID

You will then want to create and adgroup and two ads with the exact same ad text, but different destination URL’s. You will also want to have your ads served equally (“Rotate”) so that each page receives an equal amount of traffic.

By using different tracking IDs, you will be able to determine which page is converting into sales at a higher rate. Without having access to conversion tracking through a merchant, this is the most effective way to determine which landing page is converting better for you.

Based on your results you can perform several different tests and make different modifications to your landing pages to increase your conversions. By focusing on landing page conversions, you will be able to increase your overall campaign profitability.

Note: Many other programs besides Clickbank allow you to create unique tracking ID’s and this split testing technique can be used for those programs as well.

Split Testing Product Appeal

Ad Group 1 Ad 1 Landing Page 1 (focus on product A w/ tracking IDs)
Ad Group 1 Ad 1 Landing Page 2 (focus on product B w/ tracking IDs)

Split testing products is another very easy test that you can implement on your landing pages to determine which product is the best “fit’ for your website visitors. When we refer to split testing products, we’re talking about having different products on your landing page, or recommending them in different orders.

To perform a product split test, you need to have 2 different landing pages.

The ads will be identical; however the destination URL will be different so that each can send traffic to the different pages that you have created. You will want have product A the primary focus on one page and product B the primary focus on the other page.

If you have a review style page that you want to product split test, you can simply rank product A higher than product B, on one, and visa versa on the other page. If you choose to do this though, you need to use tracking IDs on your page so that when a sale is made, you know exactly which page it came from.

Over time, you may see that product A sells twice as much as product B, thus when you are finished testing you can use product A as the primary focus on your landing pages.

Split Testing Direct Linking

In the examples above we’ve talked about split testing using different landing pages, but you can also split test while direct linking using the exact same techniques. Rather than having the affiliate links with Tracking Id’s on your website, you need to put them right within your destination URL of your ad.

You can split test your ads by creating separate ads with different adcopy and different direct affiliate links for the destination url.

For instance, if you want to split test two ads for Beating Adwords, your destination urls could look like this:

Ad1: http://yourid.beatadwords.hop.clickbank.net?TID=ad1
Ad2: http://yourid.beatadwords.hop.clickbank.net?TID=ad2

Perhaps you want to perform a product split test to see which product sells better for your ad. You could do this by creating two identical ads, with destination urls that point directly to different merchant pages like this:

Ad1: http://yourid.beatadwords.hop.clickbank.net – Testing Beating Adwords
Ad2: http://yourid.ulovemoney.hop.clickbank.net – Testing Who Loves Money

Split testing is one way to effectively optimize your campaigns. There are always ways you can improve conversions and your overall ROI and we have provided you with many split testing techniques that you can quickly implement.

We have a downloadable e-book that we wrote that talks all about Research, Analysis, Implementation, and Testing (The RAIT Guide). This guide will further help you with analysis and testing your campaigns.