10% or 10x?
Aim for something that will truly change something.
Hyperlinks on the internet are typically blue.
But which sort of blue is the best blue?
Apparently, Google ran extensive experiments — a long time ago — to test 55 different shades of blue for the links of their search results.
For Google, every click is important.
Clicks matter.
Better pick the right kind of blue.
And so, they ended up A/B testing 55 different shades.
Now, here's my advice to you:
That's exactly what you should NOT be doing.
What works for Google at that scale, won't work for you.
You haven't got those problems.
You really shouldn't be trying to squeeze out every last click from the page.
You really shouldn't be incrementally optimising like that.
Forget about those incremental wins.
For the love of God, please…
Swing for the fences!
If you're a small company, you've got bigger fish to fry.
The colour of the buttons doesn't matter.
The size of the logo doesn't matter.
The design of your about page doesn't matter.
The exact copy of that 3rd email doesn't matter.
Those are all incremental gains.
It's a 10% lift, at best.
There are situations where that matters. But probably not today.
Today, aim for 10x wins.
Aim for something that will truly change something.
Something that moves the needle.
Something that fundamentally changes the equation:
Drop the email course, and switch to a webinar funnel instead!
Try a version of the landing page that's 3x longer (or 80% shorter)!
Switch from freemium to a free trial, or vice versa!
Stop trying to sell via paid ads, and switch to a sales team (or vice versa)!
Switch the audience… Or the product… Or the entire messaging.
Think it through:
Do you need a 10% uplift to be successful?
Or do you need a 2x, 5x or 10x step change?
Either answer is valid.
But match your strategy accordingly.
Run a regime of rapid A/B testing to stack those 5%, 10% or 20% incremental gains… (and trust me: they can really add up!).
But if you need a 5x gain to make the model work, then you need to change things up BIG TIME.
Split testing your headlines won't get you there.
Test the big things first.
Cheers,
—Pieter