The bottom line is that you don’t know the best way to accomplish a goal until you try several different approaches of reaching the same goal. In the web world, that process is generally referred to as “A/B Testing”. A few months ago, I created a “Recommended Technology Providers” page, and had ESM Exec Designs‘ graphic designer create several 300×250 ads to drive existing Geek Estate traffic to there. My goal was simple. Entice current agents and brokers already reading Geek Estate to look at the recommended technology providers page. I didn’t just create one ad. I created 3 (which I’ve inserted below) so as to measure which ads perform well and which ones don’t.

Wording: Real Estate Technology Products, Color: Green

Wording: Real estate software providers, Color: Green

Wording: Real estate software providers, Color: Blue

Which one do you think had the highest click through rate? If you guessed the blue one (my original guess), you are wrong.

Here are the raw numbers. The percentages in the far right column of the image below are the click through rate (columns left to right: ad name, weight, total impressions, impressions today, clicks, clicks today, overall click through rate).

The only difference between the first two ads is the wording “technology products” was swapped for “software providers”. Yet the technology products ad results in a 68% increase in click through rate. And it turns out that a blue ad doesn’t draw any more attention than a green ad, at least on this blog.

My takeaway from my A/B testing? Agents and brokers aren’t looking for software products, but rather for technology products — even though they are technically essentially the same thing.

I just de-activated the two ads that weren’t working and increased the weight of the technology products ad that was.

Are you A/B testing?