Those Who Test Will Fly. Those Who Rely On Brute Force Will Fail.

Cheow, June 21st, 2009 · 1 Comment

It has been a while since I last blogged… was really busy with my offline business and some new product online launches. Now, finally I am back with a new blog post.

If you have bought Perry Marshall (he is the world number 1 Google Adwords guru) book: Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords, you may find the title of this blog post familiar. Recently, I took some time to re-read the book again and true enough, I gained new insights by reading a book for the second time.

“Those who test will fly, those who rely on brute force will die” is a perfect lesson for all of us if we want to make good money online. The reason Perry has this thought is because of the success that Wright brothers achieved in year 1903. Yes, everyone knows that the Wright brothers are the first in flight. But do you know that just weeks before the Wright brothers were to fly the world’s first airplane, there is a man named Samuel Pierpont Langley who was launching an airplane of his own, with the assistance of an entire staff.

Langley thought that by putting a big enough engine on the glide, the plane will fly. He was wrong. The plane crashed immediately after leaving the launching pad, badly damaging the front wing. Langley did tried a second time and the results was the same. The plane crashed almost immediately. After he was ridiculed by the press, he abandoned his vision and 3 years later, Langley died a broken and disappointed man.

Meanwhile, the Wright brothers had a completely different approach to build a plane. They believed that the gliders must be good enough to glide from a hilltop without an engine. Only after the gliders were able to glide from a hilltop with no engine, they would try to put an engine to it. So after years of experimentation, when they saw that the glider is working fine, they went to build the smallest engine and put it on the glider.

And just eight days after Langley’s second failed attempt, the Wright brothers made history whereas few people even know about Langley. So what does this historical story going to do with internet marketing and making money online?

If you have been doing internet marketing for a while, I believe you know that traffic is the most vital element if you want to succeed online. And one of the best places to get traffic is from search engines. The search engine is the motor. Your website is the glider. An engine without a good set of wings will not work. When you place an engine on a glider that can work on its own, you have a plane. Driving traffic to a website that cannot convert will not work. When you feed traffic to a website that can convert, you have a business.

As I ran an online marketing agency offline, I have met countless clients that want all the traffic in the world but completely neglect their websites. If your website is not good enough, no matter how much traffic you drive, you won’t make it. Therefore, it is extremely important to test the various elements of your websites (such as the headline, opt-in form, your offer, etc) and increase the conversion rate of the page.

Start testing small and gain insights about your market and traffic. Make minor improvements step-by-step and one day, you will definitely have a profitable online business. When you have a persuasive website, you have a glider. When you have a glider, you just need to place a small engine on it and you can fly. Add Google or search engine traffic to a persuasive website, you will have a business that can soar.

That’s all for today. Hope that with this post, you now understand the importance of testing your page and improve the conversion rate of your website.

P.S: Some resources you may find useful:

1) Google Website Optimizer - Free tool to split test your web pages

2) The Secrets of a 10% Conversion Rate

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