I've been testing a new widgety thing on my website..

As you probably know, the main goal of my site is to get people to sign up for these regular emails. That's my best way of being helpful and building a relationship.

So normally I keep things very simple on the site. Just the content, a few links, and various sign up boxes.

No distractions. Nothing much to take people away from signing up.

But on the other hand, you've probably seen those little thumbnails at the bottom of articles on news sites with links to other related articles on the site.

They increase the amount of articles on your site people read, so that increases the opportunities people have to sign up. Although they may choose to read another article instead of signing up.

So which one will get me more signups? Plain and simple with all the focus on signing up. Or getting more articles read and hopefully more signups that way.

Here's another dilemma…

You want people to sign up for a webinar from advertising. Do you promote the webinar directly, or offer some sort of lead magnet to get email subscribers and then promote the webinar to subscribers?

One route is more direct. The other offers instant gratification to subscribers so may well get more people to sign up initially, but they might not then go on to register for the webinar.

Which will win?

Frankly, I have no idea in either case.

I can see the logic on both sides of the argument.

The only way to know is to test.

And you have to do the test for yourself too. You can use other people's results as guidelines and starting points. But in that second example I know people who've tested and got more registrations going directly to the webinar and others who've tested and got more through a lead magnet.

Understanding analytics and testing may be the most important skills when it comes to online marketing.

No matter how talented you are at writing. No matter how great your headlines and calls to action are. Eventually, someone who knows how to test and improve will iterate their way past you.

It's not glamorous, but it's effective.

Learn how to use Google Analytics.

Use a tool like Visual Website Optimizer or Optimizely to test different options like headlines, offers and optin form designs on your website and see which one does best.

Not every test will produce a winner. But over time your results will improve step by step.

And no one will know why, but you.

So no one will be able to get the same results as you :)