This is my 1st update as part of my LeadPages WordPress Plugin Experiment.
Every month I will publish a post like this one that shows you how this blog is progressing with LeadPages and everything I have done across the month to model the information from this LeadPages article (affiliate link).
These updates will help me track my own growth while also showing you what it looks like to actually use LeadPages with WordPress. To recap, these are the areas I’m using LeadPages on the blog:
- A Welcome Page (also called Welcome Gate)
- A LeadBox on my sidebar
- A LeadBox on my About page
- A 404 Error Pagee
- 2 Thank You Pages
What I Did In August
Since my initial blog post, I made a few changes inside my LeadPages account and on the blog.
Welcome Page
The biggest change was with my welcome gate. If you haven’t read my other post, the welcome gate is a landing page that only shows to first-time visitors. It requests for them to opt-in to the blog. It showed off a few testimonials and then if they weren’t interested, they could click over to the blog.
I had originally created a split-test for the page. One page focused on promoting my reviews and other blog content, and the other page focused on giving away my Top 5 Free Website Marketing Tools.
I decided to add a 3rd test that offers visitors to opt-in to follow this very experiment. I thought offering a specific reason to opt-in might be the tipping point to get a visitor to opt-in.
Originally, the percentage of how much each split test shows is 33%. So after a couple of days, I adjusted it so the third test would show 50% of the time, and the other two each showed 25% of the time.
My Results
Even with all the changes, I still wasn’t seeing any opt-ins to my list. I hypothosised that it was keeping people from reaching my blog because they would just exit the site instead scrolling down and continuing to the blog. Google Analytics agreed with my hypothesis, showing about a 93% exit rate from the page. So, about a week ago, I decided to disable the welcome page so visitors would at least land on my blog and be reading my posts. I had about 150 hits to the welcome page before disabling it. I’ve got another idea to replace it and hope to have it implemented before my next update.
Sidebar LeadBox
The sidebar LeadBox didn’t perform well since the last update. I only received 1 opt-in, but it does appear the second version of my split-test copy is starting to outperform my original copy. With the Welcome page out of the way, I’m hoping to report a higher conversion rate and see which test is definitely doing better.
About Page LeadBox
The about page LeadBox hasn’t seen much activity since I added it. Out of the 12 hits to the page, only 4 people have clicked the button to display the LeadBox and none have opted-in. I didn’t make an effort to improve the visual look of the button so I plan to do that before the next update.
404 Error Page
There weren’t any 404 page hits in LeadPages since last time so I can’t report on the effectiveness of my opt-in offer. LeadPages now offers a 2nd template for the 404 error page so I may switch to that one or do a split test to see which template might be most effective.
Thank You Pages
The thank you page for subscribing to the blog didn’t see any activity, but the only way to get to this thanks page is through the Welcome page version 1. With the new process I plan to test, I’m hoping to see better conversions next time.
The thank you page for the resource guide saw 1 hit which corresponds to the sidebar opt-in I had earlier this month.
My Thoughts
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed with the results over the last month. But at least now, I have a point of reference and can see my conversion efforts easily through LeadPages. One other think that I discovered during the month is my Google Analytics was showing a lot of traffic coming to my site, but LeadPages was showing a much lower number that didn’t correlate. I discovered its something called Ghost Referrals inside my Google Analytics account. Basically, there are several websites out there that refer fake traffic to a website which messes with the number of visits and other factors and make it appear the website has more referral traffic than it actually does. So, I went through and cleaned that out and I hope to see more consistent figures between LeadPages and Google.
Your Turn
What do you think about the results I’ve gotten so far? Tell me in the comments below! I always welcome your feedback!
I totally agree. It seems easier to do this for others considering I am a business consult and I follow the leaders in marketing as well. I’m currently experimenting with WordPress plugin for Leadpages myself. I wonder if the split test still work if you are using the plugin? Because I keep seeing the same page when I do it and not the other… so I’m wondering about that. But keep up the great work… I’ll be following you. 🙂
Thanks for the comment Dee. I had the same issue with only seeing one version of the optin split test, but I did have an opt-in for my variation so it makes me think the split-test does show up with the plugin. I’ll be working on another update over the next week so I appreciate you following and I hope you’re finding success with the LeadPages plugin!