Advance Praise for You Should Test That!

If you want to create massive advancements in your business and drive more sales, you have to read You Should Test That!.

—Neil Patel, Co-Founder of KISSmetrics, Crazy Egg, and Quicksprout

In a world where you can test everything, why are companies testing nothing? Maybe that’s being too harsh, but it’s true. In You Should Test That! Chris doesn’t just talk about what you should test, but how to think about your marketing in a very smart and strategic way. Too many brands are wasting too much money on marketing without doing the strategic testing first. You Should Test That! screams, “You should buy this book!”

—Mitch Joel, President of Twist Image & Author, Blogger, Podcaster of Six Pixels of Separation

Chris Goward does a fantastic job of explaining not just effective testing techniques, but also the strategic value testing can deliver to your entire marketing program. This well-illustrated guide to all aspects of testing is a must-read for anyone responsible for marketing decision-making.

—Roger Dooley, author of Brainfluence

With You Should Test That!, Goward has delivered a well-researched and insightful exploration of the latest conversion optimization principles and techniques in a practical and enjoyable book that pushes the boundaries of the art and science of optimized marketing. A definite must-read that ought to be required reading for anyone serious about optimization.

—Brett Tabke, Founder and CEO, Pubcon, the premier optimization and new media conferences

Everyone knows about A/B testing and wants to do it, but not many are doing it regularly. Why? Chris Goward has written an excellent book to answer this precise question where he urges businesses to create internal testing and optimization champions to drive business success. And to corroborate his message, Chris deploys his years of experience in the industry to show successful case studies, discuss his proven LIFT model, and analyze scientific techniques and all-too-essential rules-of-thumb. You Should Test That! is a fantastic book that covers testing and optimization from many different angles. I highly recommend it!

—Paras Chopra, CEO of Visual Website Optimizer

Chris Goward discusses a proven, scientific approach to experimentation with clarity and simplicity—while not losing the conceptual depth this topic deserves. This book at times is a primer in modern online marketing and an advanced study for hypothesis-based testing at others. A wonderfully written text—the very best on this topic I can find!

—Raju Malhotra, Director, Microsoft Corp.

Read this book, and you will profit. Chris Goward gets it. I know. I’ve stalked him for years. His LIFT framework was the missing piece of my CRO puzzle leading to millions of dollars in additional sales for our small family business over the past few years. If you’re a competitor of mine, I’m just kidding. CRO is just a fad. Your shopping cart is just fine. Don’t change a thing.

—Rob Snell, Gun Dog Supply

You Should Test That! is a thorough and irreverent guide for website testing. The wealth of case studies and various testing recipes provides any marketer with plenty of ideas from day one. I particularly liked Chapter 13, which talks about how to make testing a broader discipline throughout the entire organization.Let’s face it, we need to move from an era of “Which button is better?” to also go after questions like “What part of our product’s value prop is most compelling?” or “How should we acquire new customers?” The good news is we can use a lot of the fundamentals and best practices developed over the years in website testing and apply it much more broadly to lean marketing and entrepreneurial management practices in general.

—Tom Leung, CEO of Yabbly and former Sr. Product Manager for Google Website Optimizer

Wow! This is packed full of stuff you can use today. So many business books have a couple of good ideas and are padded out with fluff. This is jammed with good ideas from start to finish, debunking myths in a humorous and practical way and giving you the tools you need to make more money online.

—Charles Nicholls, Founder, SeeWhy

The days of marketing online just for the sake of being present are long gone. Stakeholders at all corporate levels now demand optimized campaigns, making clear the value proposition and return on investment. You Should Test That! reveals deep online testing secrets that fuel some of the most effective companies in the world.Read this book, or read about it somewhere else.

—Marty Weintraub, author of Killer Facebook Ads and CEO, aimClear

Chris Goward knows the secret to business: listen to your gut, and then test what it says. This book is a must read for understanding why scientific testing is the key to continuous improvement in your organization.

—Jackie Huba, author of Creating Customer Evangelists and Citizen Marketers

Chris Goward is the Nate Silver of conversion optimization—smart, entertaining, and a step ahead of everyone else. If you want to be prepared for the future of online marketing, read his book.

—Lance Loveday, Co-author, Web Design for ROI and CEO, Closed Loop

What I really liked about this book was the thorough data-driven approach to helping you make informed decisions of what to do with your website. Packed with 15 real-world case studies, Chris writes a non-technical book that is full of practical tips for building a culture of business decisions through tested insights. In other words, getting data and its sibling testing optimization out of a silo and integrated into the blood stream of your organization.

—Brian Clifton, author of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics

I thoroughly enjoyed the unique perspective Chris is taking in his book when talking about conversion rate optimization. It’s an eye-opener! Also, the great number of case studies in the book makes the message even more convincing. As an entrepreneur, I did find something new in this approach.

—Ann Smarty, Founder, SEOSmarty.com

Chris is a highly regarded conversion expert who has produced a wonderful book that makes a complex process easy to understand. It covers many of the organizational barriers to change and how to get support for changes to the website. It also covers what you need to know about managing and implementing your conversion project. I recommend this book to anybody wanting to improve their conversion success.

—Bruce Clay, coauthor of Search Engine Optimization All-in-One For Dummies and President, Bruce Clay, Inc.

What I like about Chris’s approach is that he can be both tactical and strategic. On the one hand, you can use this book to ensure your website isn’t a slacker. But on the other, you can also use it on a broader level, to guide decisions based less on gut, and more on real insight.

—Ann Handley, co-author of Content Rules and Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs

Marketing has changed fundamentally with the rapid growth of the online channel, to the point that “close enough” and “gut feel” are mostly working their way out of marketers’ vernacular. Chris Goward’s new book is an important manifesto for today’s digital marketers that want to continue to push lead and conversion performance while also aiming for the holy grail of outstanding user experience. He describes that testing is so much more than simply “conversion optimization,” and makes solid arguments for the value of adopting a data-driven iterative testing model. I would recommend that this book be read not only by marketing executives and strategists, but also by the analysts that are collecting and evaluating business performance data.

—Chris Boggs, Digital Marketing Strategist with over 13 years of experience, currently serving as the Chairman of SEMPO.org

In his book You Should Test That! Chris Goward preaches the importance of clarity, among other things, and he takes his own advice. Goward is unambiguous and unyielding as he guides us to tests that give clear direction toward online success. Yet, he successfully weaves scientific rigor into intuition and creativity. The chapter on creating an optimized value proposition should be required reading in business schools. His Optimization Manifesto sums it up perfectly: “We believe in art and science.”

—Brian Massey, Conversion Scientist and author of Your Customer Creation Equation

Testing and data changed the way we market at Grasshopper, starting with conversion optimization, we built a culture around data and marketing optimization that now has gone into all parts of the organization. Data has optimized everything we do, resulting in increased revenue and profit. Every Founder and Marketer should read this book.

—David Hauser, Cofounder of Grasshopper, Chargify, PopSurvey, and Angel Investor

Before the Web, non-targeted advertising ruled and creative people dominated marketing. But as Chris Goward shows, the Web allows for infinite data analysis, driving success to those who test. Guess what? The quants are now the most important people on your marketing team.

—David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR

Website optimization has long been one of the easiest ways to improve your conversion rate, but how and what to test is always in contention. What has never been in contention among the best testers, however, is that your tests should be structured and scientific. You Should Test That! provides an easy to understand framework for testing, and lots of excellent ideas for how to optimize toward specific goals. A much needed comprehensive approach to testing that doesn’t exist today.

—Jesse Nichols, Agency Partnerships, Google Analytics

Chris Goward’s book You Should Test That! presents a compelling marketing manifesto to test everything—gut instincts, market research best practices, experts’ advice—for continuous improvement. Testing works, and as the author’s manifesto states, “testing is the crucible for decision-making,”—profitable decision making. This book details a clear, actionable explanation of the science and art of getting more revenue generating actions from the same amount of visitors.Using a top-notch roster of case studies, Chris Goward talks us through just how real companies increased conversions and revenue doing so. His book is a thoroughly persuasive argument for creating a data driven culture at your company and a road map for being an effective evangelist for it. How to gain senior-level buy-in for testing. How to involve other departments. Interactive tools to tie results to revenue.

—Anne F. Kennedy, International Search & Social Marketing Strategist, and author Global Search Engine Marketing: Fine-tuning Your International Search Engine Results

Understanding marketing testing, website optimization, search traffic improvement, usability testing and all the rest are simply part of being a marketer these days. But this book is also about marketing; branding, messaging, persuasion, etc. And once you have those under your belt, you are well on your way to strategic marketing optimization.

—Jim Sterne, Founder, eMetrics Summit and Chairman, Digital Analytics Association

All businesses create content today...but only a handful test their web content. You Should Test That! will help you set up a culture of testing in your organization that will deliver bottom line results. Heck, since you’re spending so much on your content, why don’t you check to see if it actually is working for you. Read this book...then share it with your entire marketing team.

—Joe Pulizzi, Founder, Content Marketing Institute and author of Managing Content Marketing: The Real-World Guide for Creating Passionate Subscribers to Your Brand

Testing is, without a doubt, one of the most effective ways to improve digital customer experiences, yet it remains an untapped resource for most organizations. Chris’ book offers a definitive guide on how to approach testing to develop a systematic program that will elevate your business tomorrow and for years to come. This book is a must have for the modern digital marketer’s bookshelf.

—John Lovett, Senior Partner, Web Analytics Demystified and President, Digital Analytics Association

You Should Test That! provides the most comprehensive framework for testing and optimization that I’ve seen. Chris not only goes far deeper into strategies that deliver results than most but makes the business case as well. A must-read for anyone looking to optimize their digital marketing results.

—Jonathan Mendez, CEO, Yieldbot

It is a misnomer that creative types abhor any left-brain stimulation. In fact, the best right-brain thinkers feed on data that informs, inspires, and empowers them. This book outlines the converged path between art and science and how data, optimization and analytics can produce the ultimate 1–2 punch: sales and experience.

—Joseph Jaffe, author of Flip the Funnel

Analytics is amazing. But all the data and analysis in the world doesn’t mean anything unless you take action. And in the online world that means testing.But many people are scared to test. They don’t understand the process and think it’s too complicated or risky. And they very rarely know where to start. Chris does a great job of presenting an easy to understand framework that will help anyone in the online space get started with testing. Once you start testing you’ll come to understand testing as a way to better understand your user and not just a way to improve conversion rate.

—Justin Cutroni, author of Google Analytics, coauthor of Performance Marketing with Google Analytics, and blogger at cutroni.com/blog

Continuous website conversion data is essential to all aspects of online success—if it ain’t tested, don’t fix it! Chris Goward gets it and delivers the “how-to’s” that will get you results.

—Ken Jurina, President & CEO, Top Draw Inc.

Buy this book right now if you are interested in turning your website into a conversion generating machine. While countless books exist that cover a multitude of strategies for generating traffic to your website, few exist that actually help you close the deal once a visitor arrives. This how-to guide on conversion optimization by Chris Goward unveils proven strategies and scientific methods to help you optimize your website and drive more conversions; it represents one of the best investments you can make to make more money by closing more deals.

—Kristopher B. Jones, Chairman, Internet Marketing Ninjas and best-selling author of Search Engine Optimization: Your Guide to Effective Internet Marketing

I really, really wish I’d written this book—*picture sad face*—it’s the clearest definition of the what, how and why of conversion rate optimization I’ve read. Best of all, it’s a unique approach. After reading about 100 marketing books and only learning one thing from each, it’s exciting to come across a book that makes you smarter after every chapter.

—Oli Gardner, Co-founder & Creative Director, Unbounce.com

Wow, this is some of the best content I have read in the optimization world in a long time! It provides a very solid strategic framework but at the same time breaks it into practical steps people can immediately turn into action in their conversion optimization efforts. I really liked the flow, the examples, how close it was to the day-to-day experiences and challenges we have. This strategy works for Dell to continuously improve our online sales. All business managers, marketers and conversion optimizers should read this and give copies to their teams.

—Nazli Yuzak, Sr. Digital Optimization Consultant, Dell.com

You Should Test That! cuts through the myths of universal best practice and exposes the common mistakes even the experts make when developing a testing program, and offers a comprehensive, data-driven methodology for high impact testing. If you want to move from testing practitioner to strategist, “You Should Read This.”

—Linda Bustos, director of ecommerce research, Elastic Path Software, getelastic.com

Online testing is rapidly evolving from a standalone activity to a core discipline within leading online Enterprises. Today’s Enterprises are requiring an integrated range of optimization techniques, including testing, to deliver the most relevant, engaging and consistent customer experience for every prospect and customer across every channel. This book is perfectly timed with the market and will show the reader how to get the most out of testing and optimization.

—Mark Simpson, Founder and President of Maxymiser

Changes in conversion rates can significantly increase company’s bottom line. This is obviously powerful and Chris does an awesome job distilling information & making conversion concepts easy to grasp & understand. You Should Test That! is a must read for anyone looking to take their conversion optimization efforts to the next level.

—Mona Elesseily, VP Online Marketing Strategy, Page Zero Media

For everyone who has suspected there’s more to successful conversion optimization than the latest “Quick Wins” list, this book is for you. You Should Test That! outlines a clear, powerful approach to improving your website’s bottom line.

—Sandra Niehaus, Co-author, Web Design for ROI and VP of User Experience at Closed Loop

When marketers complain that they don’t know what’s working, they’re really complaining that they don’t know how to figure it out. The fact is that we’re past the dark ages of digital, and that there are robust methods for understanding and improving marketing performance.You Should Test That! does a lot more than just give advice from on high...it explains what to test, and how to test it, in clear language. Just as important, the book is an excellent guide for where to spend precious testing resources (and where not to) because time is marketing’s most precious, nonrenewable resource.Readers of most business books finish with the knowledge of what they should be doing, but quickly run up against the realities of how to get it done. When you’ve finished You Should Test That!, you’ll be armed not just with the belief in an importance of testing and optimization, but with the mental tools to accomplish them.

—Stefan Tornquist, VP Research, Econsultancy US

Powerful conversion advice from an industry luminary.

—Stephan Spencer, Co-Author of The Art of SEO and Author of Google Power Search

Landing page optimization is often the most poorly executed discipline of digital marketing, yet can be one of the biggest payoffs. Read this book to learn how to go beyond the basics, get a graduate degree, and become a strategic marketing optimization ninja.

—Eric Enge, Co-Author of The Art of SEO and CEO of Stone Temple Consulting

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Dear Reader,

Thank you for choosing You Should Test That!: Conversion Optimization for More Leads, Sales and Profit or The Art and Science of Optimized Marketing. This book is part of a family of premium-quality Sybex books, all of which are written by outstanding authors who combine practical experience with a gift for teaching.

Sybex was founded in 1976. More than 30 years later, we’re still committed to producing consistently exceptional books. With each of our titles, we’re working hard to set a new standard for the industry. From the paper we print on to the authors we work with, our goal is to bring you the best books available.

I hope you see all that reflected in these pages. I’d be very interested to hear your comments and get your feedback on how we’re doing. Feel free to let me know what you think about this or any other Sybex book by sending me an email at [email protected]. If you think you’ve found a technical error in this book, please visit http://sybex.custhelp.com. Customer feedback is critical to our efforts at Sybex.

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Sybex, an Imprint of Wiley

To Danica, Medo, and Shalom. You. Rock.

Acknowledgments

I’m thankful.

Thankful for the limitless (so far) supply of support my wife, Danica, has given me over the years and especially the past few months as I’ve developed this content, grown WiderFunnel, and overcome obstacles. She never fails to give before I know what I need.

I’m thankful for my joyous, encouraging, and loving daughters, Medo and Shalom, who have given many Skype hugs as I travel the world promoting and refining the concepts in this book.

I’m thankful to the conversion heroes at WiderFunnel for delivering awesome results for our clients with or without me in the office.

I’m thankful for the WiderFunnel clients who have allowed us to learn these marketing-optimization principles using their web traffic and share a few of the test results with the world.

I’m thankful to the many conference organizers and business leaders who have repeatedly invited me back to speak to their audiences about these ideas and fine-tune the message over the years.

I’m thankful to Willem Knibbe, senior acquisitions editor, for sharing my vision and advocating for this book. Thanks also to Pete Gaughan, editorial manager; Jim Compton, developmental editor; Brendan Regan, my technical editor; and the rest of the Sybex team for giving me support and teaching me the process as a teething author.

I’m thankful for my CEO mastermind group, PX6, for your advice and support through the challenges: Tom, Claudia, Paul, Maurice, Jill, Greg, Diane, Geoff, and Mike. You’ve been lifelines and valued mentors to me—each of you.

I’m thankful for an extended network of parents, sisters, brothers, and friends who always show up when we need support and truly provide a safe village to raise our family. You give me the freedom to take on ambitious projects like this.

I’m thankful to have some thoughts that some people seem to want to read.

I’m thankful that you’ve decided to read this book.

About the Author

Chris Goward was one of the first people to look at online content and say, “You Should Test That!” From that revelation he founded WiderFunnel—the full-service marketing-optimization agency that pioneered landing-page and conversion-rate optimization methods for companies such as Google, Electronic Arts, Iron Mountain, and BabyAge.com.

Chris is a top-rated speaker and keynote at conferences and seminars globally, like Search Engine Strategies, PubCon, Search Marketing Expo, European Conversion Summit, eMetrics, and Conversion Conference, where he evangelizes how marketers should test and gain insights about their messages and websites.

Chris began his first digital marketing consultancy in 1994, and he has led online and offline response strategies for ad agencies DDB, TBWA, and Cossette. He developed the LIFT Model and Kaizen Method in response to the traditional agencies’ flawed mentality: “Win industry awards regardless of client results.” Today, his marketing-optimization system is helping some of the world’s most successful websites lift their leads, sales, and revenue by double- and triple-digit percentages.

An entrepreneur at heart, Chris has also launched numerous businesses since his early childhood candy bar arbitrage venture, including the Rockit Roller human-powered scooter, a graphic design and signage company, an online jewelry business with his wife, and a web design consultancy. He is currently a founding member of the Global Conversion Alliance and is an advisor to startups like Unbounce.com. Marketing Magazine named him a “Top 30 Under 30” in 2004.

When Chris is not planning conversion strategies for WiderFunnel’s clients or on the road speaking, he can be found hitting the ski slopes with his wife and daughters, cheering on the Vancouver Canucks, or trying to grow parsley in his office.