Subject: Split Testing Bridge Pages

It?s common for people to create a bridge page and then just assume it?s doing a good job at whatever it is they created it for. They may think that because they are getting results, the bridge page was created correctly. But what if you could double your conversions? Wouldn?t it be worth the extra time and effort to do some split testing?

There?s a lot of elements you can split test, but the most important would be:

* Headline
* Call-to-action
* Graphics 

Your headline is always going to be the most important element of any page. Whether you?re talking about a bridge page, a sales page, a squeeze page, or even a blog post, the headline is the first thing people notice. If it doesn?t strike the right chord with your audience, the rest of your page probably doesn?t matter.

Your call-to-action is also incredibly important. If you fail to include a solid call-to-action, or your call-to-action is not as strong as it could be, you?re not going to see the results you hope for.

Let?s say you are creating a bridge page to promote an affiliate product. You create a basic pre-selling page that focuses on a few important aspects of the product, and at the end, you use a weak call-to-action such as ?Click here for more information.? The average person isn?t likely to respond to such as weak call-to-action. Instead, you want to try out a few different options until you find one that gives you a good conversion rate.

Graphics are one of those things that are tricky to get right. You want your page to look attractive and professional, but sometimes graphics can actually distract users from your message and hurt conversions. Sometimes the most simple, bland pages convert the best, but this isn?t always the case. That?s why it?s important to test a few different graphic styles and layouts until you find the one that is most effective.

If you can?t afford to use any of that expensive split-testing software, you can just do it manually, but remember, you?ll need a fairly large sample size to get a truly accurate test to the effectiveness of an element. I?d suggest a bare minimum of 1,000 unique visitors on a particular version before you switch to a different one, and if you want to test 10 different elements, that means you?ll need a total of 10,000 unique visitors to test each of those elements properly. If you can?t get that much traffic, you might want to consider using a split-testing system, which can help get a more accurate reading without as much traffic.

That?s it for our bridge page lessons. I hope they?ve been helpful to you, and I hope they?ll help you increase your conversions and sales. Best of luck!
