Decide what to test when you have no data

1. Survey or interview users to ask what their expectations would be for the product you offer.

Your offer is not what you give, but what a user understands they’ll receive when they buy or subscribe. Is your offer in line with those expectations?

2. Test your communication and messages for clarity, specifics, and unnecessary hype.

Ask users what they think will receive after reading your messaging and how compelling they found that offer. For example, the phrase, Join my free newsletter does not provide much detail about what people will receive. It is also not a very compelling offer.

3. Test to find out what your audience wants and needs, then craft and deliver messages tailored to that.

Start running a survey seeking to understand their wants and needs. Tailor multiple messages that focus on different variations of those desires. Split test the different approaches to discover which performs the best. Continue to refine the messaging through subsequent rounds of split testing.

4. Test your calls to action through split testing.

Be sure to test the following: Position Messaging Color Size Imagery

5. Test that your headline and value proposition (VP) are relevant, descriptive, and express how you’re different.

For example, does your VP answer the question, Why buy from us and not the competition? Your headline and value proposition can’t be vague, like Get more pizza, or irrelevant, like Welcome to our site! You can test this through running split tests on variations of wording.

6. Test that your VP and headline capture your audience's attention and build interest.

People are impatient and will only read the first few bits of your page, so try making your headline with big-font statements and incorporating images. For example, build interest in your headline by including a clear and specific paragraph of text. Try a 5-second test: show users the design for 5-8 seconds and ask them what the offer was. If they can accurately describe the offer, then you know you have explained it clearly.

7. Test that your users understand what will happen when they click a call to action.

The button copy matters. The more clear it is what happens after they click, the more they click. This can be tested by asking users what they expect to happen when they click when running usability testing.

8. Choose a page that is important for conversions to prioritize for your tests and changes.

For example, making changes to the product page or shopping cart screen will generally give the biggest boost.

9. Change one page at a time, focusing on pages that are as close to conversion as possible.

For example, start with your product page or shopping cart screen, to get your biggest conversion boosts.