Testing times: split-testing rules

Wouldn’t it be great if you could buy a full page ad in the Daily Telegraph, but the print morphed evenly throughout the day, so you could see which ad was the most effective?

One of Adwords most powerful features allows you to do just that. For the same set of keywords you can display as many Ads as you like. By default, the Adwords manager is set to optimize which means Google will establish which is your best Ad, and favour that Ad.

If you’re checking into Adwords once a day (I live there), you should set to rotate. This allows you to choose the winner from your split-testing. You need 20 clicks before you can declare a winner, anything less is just not enough data. There’s a great tool at www.splittester.com that helps you check your analysis.

In split-testing we tend to focus on getting a high clickthrough-rate (CTR). CTRs are definitely important, as Google always rewards relevance, but a high CTR and poor conversion rate is a fool’s game. Don’t lose sight of the end game, which is winning customers.

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