I’ve just tested a WordPress plugin called Simple Page Tester that promises to let you easily split test a page or post without having to do any coding. In fact, I’ll quote the promises it makes here:

» Conduct really simple split testing with a step by step interface
» Run split tests without having to insert lines of code into your templates
» Track your results easily with goals in Google Analytics
» Declare the winner of your split test and have it automatically morph into the master page while removing the other variation (saving you the clean up)

So, did the plugin live up to its promise? It did! In a total of about 5 minutes, with most of that time involving me taking screenshots for this post, I’d created a test and ran it quickly to test it out. Now, in a real life situation, I’d run the test for a lot longer, so I’d get a much bigger sample to help me decide which landing page was best to use, but that has no bearing on whether or not the plugin works well. The fact of the matter is that it does work, it’s very easy, and it’s just simply brilliant.

Here’s what I did. I decided I wanted to see if more people would click a download button for a tutorial if I used one set of screenshots and description, or another set of screenshots and a different description. This is the kind of thing that is great when you want people to take some specific action – buy a product, fill out a form, download something, or click through to an affiliate product. Now, I already had a page set up for this download, so I wanted to test it against a similar page with different images and description. Let’s see how I did that.

First, let’s take a look at a couple of screenshots of the process after installing the plugin.

In this screenshot, you can see that in my normal page editing screen, there’s now a button to the right to setup a split test for this page, if I’d like. If I click that button, I can choose to duplicate this page (and then edit it however I’d like), choose another already existing page as the second test page, or create an entirely new test page. I chose to just duplicate this page, and then I made a few changes to that second page. I ended up with the original master page and the second page that was a little different. As you’ll see in the next screenshot, I chose to show each page approximately half the time, so 50% of the users would see the master page and 50% would see the second page.

My original, master page URL was mysite.com/download-tutorial, and the second test page ended up being mysite.com/download-tutorial-2, which the plugin automagically created for me (and I edited, remember?). I then set up some Analytics goals to track the response. Now I was read,y so I put the master page URL (mysite.com/download-tutorial) in my site’s menu, and let the visitors see it and visit it. (If you aren’t sure how to set up goals in Google Analytics, the manual for the plugin gives this URL that helps you figure out how to set up Google Analytics goals).

After running the test for a short time, my analytics showed me that the Master page had received the most clicks on the download button. Now that I knew that the Master page was the one that was most successful, I clicked the button for that page to declare it the winner. When I did so, the secondary test page was automagically deleted for me by the plugin, and from now on, only the winning master page will be shown to visitors.

Easy. Brilliant. Can’t wait to see my conversions skyrocket because of this plugin!