The web site that is the subject of this report shows that high conversion improvements can also be achieved by lower trafficked web sites with less than 4,000 unique page visitors per month. A typical study on a high traffic site is one published by Marketing Sherpa - case #CS761 dated May 24, 2007 entitled "Multivariate Test Lifts Subscription Site's Revenue 697%" in which test pages were required to be served to 110,000 unique visitors over a few weeks.

A further two high traffic studies were published by Marketing Experiments on July 16, 2007 entitled "Landing Page Optimization Tested - Creating Effective Incentives" in which one study involved a large subscription-based site and another the world's largest online news service.

This leads to the impression that conversion rate improvement testing is generally only viable for medium to high volume traffic sites and not for lower trafficked sites that don't have pages with 100's of thousands of visitors a week or even a month.

And if you can't get the traffic from free organic search engine listings, paying to get traffic to a page by using PPC is not always cost-effective, even during a test, as this study shows.

The subject of this conversion rate improvement was the web site of a small family run hotel. The web site http://www.hdasantafe.com was chosen because it more closely represents the vast majority of smaller sites on the Internet in terms of the traffic it receives. In fact the web page chosen for improvement received on average just 3,890 unique visitors per month.

Anne Contreras the hotel joint owner, responsible for marketing and website design had done much to improve the site and increase traffic through pay per click (PPC) and search engine optimization of the site.

Anne had this to say:
"We had worked hard to create a very attractive and informative site. Traffic did significantly increase but we were frustrated by the total lack of increased bookings, sales were flat. The product was good. The prices were right. If more people were viewing the site and everyone liked it why wasn't that translating into more conversions? We were stumped."

Although traffic had increased by almost 97% over the previous 12 months, revenue to the site had not increased by the same amount. In addition PPC was not profitable and the conversion of site visitors to bookings for hotel accommodation had stagnated at 0.11%.

The hotel web site enabled online bookings to be made for accommodation and acted as a marketing platform for wedding and conference service bookings, which were taken offline.

In an evaluation of the entire website which included the site design and its current conversion rate it was concluded that significant improvements could be made to the site that would improve bookings and hence increase sales revenue for the hotel.

SITE IMPROVEMENTS
The majority of site traffic entered through the home page and although visually appealing the page lacked focus in terms of its written content. It also suffered from unclear navigation and had too many links that were likely to prove to be a distraction to visitors.

Before any modifications were made, 35 pages on the site were chosen for a traffic survey in order to determine visitor behaviour on the site. From the results concerns about the unfocused site navigation were confirmed and it became clear that at least four other key website pages apart from the homepage, would need to be improved.

TEST FACTORS
The elements chosen on the homepage for testing were: Page Layout, Header Graphic, Page Headline, Sub-Headline, Main Body Content, Inclusion of additional Images and Testimonials and overall visual page appearance.

A simple test was devised in which 5 different pages were tested against the original unmodified homepage in a 6 way A/B/C/D/E/F split test.

The pages tested can be seen in the full PDF report (1.2MB) available FREE at: http://www.the-search-engine-optimizer.com/directinfo/IncreasingRevenue.html

ADDITIONAL MODIFIED SITE PAGES
The homepage linked to four other key pages each containing specific information regarding the hotel, the room types, the wedding services and a tour of the hotel facilities. These four pages were also redesigned with rewritten content, modified layouts, graphics, new photos, and for one page, a video was modified.

TEST SCENARIO
Visitors to the site who were presented with test page version 1 would see the original home page and the four original key pages when using the navigation. Visitors presented with test page versions 2 to 6 would see a new home page variant and the new modified key pages when using the on-page navigation.

The 6 way A/B/C/D/E/F split test lasted for 59 days and during that time no other modifications were made to the entire web site.

TEST RESULTS
The test results showed that page version 2 produced a conversion rate of 0.64% compared to the original homepage version 1 with a conversion rate of 0.08%.

Using the exact conversion rate figures for version 2 of 8/1258 and version 1 as 1/1255 this equates to an increased conversion rate of ( 0.63593 - 0.07968 ) / 0.07968 = 698%

The conversion rate improvement of the homepage was therefore 698%

Although all new home page versions 2 to 6 produced a better conversion rate than the original version 1 page the statistical difference between versions 2 to 6 was not significant enough to determine an outright winner. The test would have needed to be left longer to run.

All new homepages were significantly better than the original page

The average number of online bookings per day for lodgings taken by the hotels reservation system during the 6 months prior to the conversion improvement work was compared to the average online bookings and value per day taken during the test period.

The overall site sales revenue was improved by 181%

CONCLUSIONS
The study showed that a 698% conversion rate improvement of a homepage with traffic less than 4,000 unique visitors per month, coupled with a 181% increase in sales revenue could be achieved. This demonstrated that web sites with low volumes of traffic are just as capable of achieving high conversion rate improvements by using split testing, as web sites with medium to high volumes of traffic - 100,000+ unique visitors per month.

About the Author

Andy provides expert advice on optimization for search engines and on landing page optimization for conversion rate improvement leading to increased sales or opt-ins. The FREE full PDF report (1.2MB) of this study is available for download at: http://www.the-search-engine-optimizer.com/directinfo/IncreasingRevenue.html