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[David Thompson]

 Hey guys,

the craziest thing is happening right now
I'm doing a mini sale and decided I wanted to
test two headlines but using the same body
text and images.

Now here's the funny thing both salesletters
are converting over 5.5% at the moment. Each
have the same amount of traffic and views one
is at 5.6% and the other 5.7%...LOL

The product only cost $9.97, the headlines
are in maroon and navy, now one headline is
relatively long and the other is short, now
again the headlines are the only difference
between the two.

Has anyone come across this b4 and what do you do?
Do you go in and tweak them again or let it run
for awhile still?

Or do you move on to the body of the salesletter
and improve it there?

If you want to check out the headlines let me know.

--David

[Lisa Preston]

I'd have to guess that the headline lengths don't make any difference.

If you wanted to tweak further, I'd try maybe the colours or even the font.
I understand Georgia font converts better, but that would be something you'd need to try.

A 5.6% conversion is nothing to sneeze at, though.

[Jennifer Herold]

You could do a third split test...no reason you can't take the same sales letter and put different fonts/colors etc on it and no reason you can't come up with a new headline.  5.6 or 5.7% conversion is pretty good of course, so if it were me I'd let that run and put up a new one to see if you could get 6-7% conversion.

And so on and so forth.....

[David Thompson]

Hey Lisa, Jen,

these are excellent feedback more creative ways to improve
the conversions nice ladies. 

Yeah I plan on testing the colors and font more and see
whether that makes a difference or not, once that is done
I'll look at the body of the message and test small bits.

--David

[Tony Blake]

David...

As a copywriter I have found that headline length actually does make a difference... the more concise, impactful, interesting and interest inducing headline you can use is often the one that works the best...

Joe Sugarman and Ted Nicholas have always advocated headlines that are no longer than 17 words... that sounds like it's very restrictive, but if you think about it 17 words is quite a bit of language to attract someone into your salesletter -- short, powerful and with a promise to deliver in the body of the letter always works best (of course you can always use a sub-head to deliver more info too)...

As for font choice... I'm going to go against my esteemed colleague (Lisa) and say that testing has proven the TAHOMA font to be the most effective for online headlines -Tahoma is a clear, sharp sans-serif font which reads well and is impactful... oh, and if you like to use red in your headline here are a couple of tips: 1) limit the amount you use as "red" is always considered as an "alert" color... use it for emphasis and impact not for your complete headline... 2) try to use a darker color of red, not just red itself... on a webpage red tends to "fluoresce" and be very bright, using a slightly darker version (going towards brown/maroon) works much better...

Hope this helps...

Success!!!

Tony Blake
Marketing Mindreader™
New Media/Content2.0™ Maven
Õ¿Õ¬

[John Ritz]

Good points. But conversion means very little by itself. Is it statistically significant?

Plug in your numbers here and see. While Perry created this for Google PPC ads, it works equally well for salesletter split tests:

http://www.splittester.com

I've often found that the winning letter upon starting often becomes the losing letter once enough visitors make it statistically significant.

Cheers,

John

[David Thompson]

Hey John,

that's a bloody cool site man thanks
for sharing it bro.

Tony there's just so much to tweak on salesletters man
I feel lost but taking the advice you guys give and plug
away slowly but surely. 

Where else you can get top class advice like this no
holds bared... damm

--David

[Lisa Preston]

As for font choice... I'm going to go against my esteemed colleague (Lisa) and say that testing has proven the TAHOMA font to be the most effective for online headlines -Tahoma is a clear, sharp sans-serif font which reads well and is impactful...

DON'T LISTEN TO HIM!! 

He's feeble-minded... Mr. "Old School"...

Brave, though. 

[John Ritz]

Actually Tahoma used to be the champ. Lately Impact is kicking Tahoma's arse!

But Impact isn't practical for a lot of longer headlines.

Just some food for thought. I've been testing pithier headlines lately with great results (with Impact). Let your longer headlines be your deck copy and subheads. Remember, you headline only needs to get them to start reading, where your salesletter takes over.

John

[ElevatingYourBusiness]

OK  I have now tried all 3 ideas for my titles.  Impact, Tahoma, Georgia.  I use Impact on my flyers, etc.  So that would have been a good one to use.  However, when I tried it, the font sizes of the header tags (H1, etc)  seem to need to be changed.  So I went back to Tahoma, Georgia, Verdana in my stylesheet.

So... now that thats done for a while    what is the current thinking on the recommended fonts for the text of a site and what size fonts do you recommend.

[John Ritz]

This is what I've generally used as a style for my body:

font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

And of course everything else inherits that.

There are, of course, always exceptions. Especially if you're doing a theme thing. Dan Kennedy's famous crayon letter comes to mind (I forget where he swiped it from).

And many non-IM niches might also benefit from different fonts. Only testing can tell for sure, but for business-related sites, the Arial or sans-serif seems to test well. For direct mail (especially B2B), I typically use serif fonts more.

John

[jmkane]

O.K.
Right about now my head REALLY hurts!

Now, I have heard that tweaking can make you go blind.
Didn't know you can go crazy from it.

Lisa said the Fonz is from Georgia?

Well, guess it does make one crazy after all because my memories,
although seems wrong ones, are about the Fonz being from Milwaukee.

Upon looking above every posters name though,I'm getting a clue.
"Buy Me A Beer, Buy Me A Beer, Buy Me A Beer"
Get ANY work done!

Back home the only converting I remember is converting corn into
a nice tasty beverage.
5% Conversions, huh?
Not much better than "Near Beer" at 3%

I could teach you guys a bit about that as we
got about 90% proof from our half arsed "mashups" not a stinkin' 5%.

Yeah,we saw colours too, every one in the rainbow

5% don't put no hair on your chest like my Mtn Dew.
So, Ladies please dilute with lemonaide unless you lookin to be
dating that Wolverine guy.

We usually started "testing" right after we punched out on Friday night
at the paper mill.

Uncle Elmer did drive a Tacoma. Y'all must be from my area because he did
impact his Tacoma on Miss Betty's Veranda after a bit 'o testin' at Clifford's.
Lounge.

She used a few more than just 17 words while she sans serifed his headlines
with a broom handle.

And why do you need a spit-tester?
Man, who'd you have to P'off to get THAT job!?
Just let 'R rip and you'll know right away if it's working good.

Finally, if all a guy here has to do to get famous is write a letter with a "Crayon"
and a stolen one at that, well call me MR Famous Amos 'cause I can right my
whole name in the snow and not just a letter.AND I don't need no crayons to do it.