If you’ve never heard of Trevor Claiborne, he’s the product manager for Google Website Optimizer at the Googleplex.  I had the privilege of meeting and discussing many of the Google initiatives this past weekend at The System Seminar in Chicago, Illinois at the beautiful Westin Hotel.

I remember reading a statistic that 94% of visitors to a B2B website end up leaving, not providing a call-to-action and never come back.  That stat was wrong, Trevor claims that 98% of people leave.

Google is an Internet Marketer as well.  They just happen to be very good at what they do.  They built their business on testing, they test EVERYTHING.

Trevor suggests that you begin testing now.  He suggests that you test a small number of BIG changes.  He claims you have an average of 5 seconds to engage a reader into a call-to-action.  He also suggests that you begin your testing on high bounce rate pages.

First, you better have some sort of analytics installed on your website.  I use Google analytics.

Second, use Google Website Optimizerto conduct tests.  It’s extremely easy to use and in some cases a test can be set up in less than 10 minutes.  Claiborne provided several case studies of increases in conversion well over 100% by testing sales pages, purchase buttons, email-opt in text and ultimately conversion to a call to action or sale.

This tool required about 100-200 total conversions for the test to be statistically valid.  While tests are being run, it will NOT affect your SEO rankings, because according to Matt Cutts (system engineer at Google), the tests are separate pages that are not listed in the Google index and Google decides which page version to show.

I would also download the Google Website Optimizer Techie Guide.  This will provide you with comprehensive information on how to set this.

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