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Double Your Profits With Your First Line of HTML
One of the biggest mistakes I see affiliates, copywriters and webmasters in general make is not even having valid HTML
You might think that it just doesn't matter very much as long the pages render fine in most browsers.
Let me give you some test results that might change your mind and double your profits.
Having valid HTML starts with the first line of your document which should be the doctype tag. You can do a "view source" on this page or any other valid HTML page to see the standard doctype.
Since EVERYTHING on our sites is under test, we decided to test not having a doctype a long time ago. The results were devastating. I don't have the numbers anymore, but I do have the numbers for a more recent test that was almost as devastating (ie: think about losing over half of your profits).
Most people put the doctype tag across two lines splitting between the quotes. That looks awkward and wrong to me, so I decided to put the doctype on a single line with just a space between the quotes.
I ran that through the W3C validator and it validated so I assumed there would be absolutely no repercussions to "fixing" the doctype tag. It would just look nicer in the source code.
Of course, we run a shop where it is just impossible to do something like that without testing it. So the new format for the docttype tag on a single line was put under test on a site that was earning $5.79 per day on average.
Most people test for conversion rate changes. That's good, but many elements have the potential for changing traffic levels too. Maybe they render differently on some browsers causing less traffic because the page is messed up and they close the page before it loads. Maybe the search engines won't like the new format of the tag.
So, for elements like this, we use "periodic income" instead of conversion ratio for testing. A less fancy way of saying "periodic income" is "dollars per day."
After calculating conversion ratio and visitor value, the visitor value is multipled by the number of visitors that have seen that variable version and then divided by the amount of time that the variable version has been under test.
The result is a holistic test that captures everything and not just conversion ratio or visitor value.
So this was put under test against a doctype tag that was split across two lines on a site that was making $5.79 per day.
Guess what happened?
The earnings for the new format of doctype dropped to $2.83 per day!
It mattered that much.
Lessons learned:
1. Split the doctype html code across two lines like everyone else does.
2. Validate your HTML code. It starts with adding that line to the top of every HTML document which declares what kind of document it is.
3. Test EVERYTHING.
4. Test for changes in traffic, not just conversion ratio.
I hope those lessons help you double your profits... or at least avoid making a mistake that could drop your profits in half.
Stephen Dean says:
Thanks Kristi! Changing my HTML templates now.
Stoneman says:
Thanks Kristi!
Leave a Response...
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