Always Test Your Action Sequences
Always test your opt-in forms, your contact forms, your order forms, your upsells. Anything that captures prospect or customer information should be tested before making it “go live.”
And if for some reason you suddenly stop receiving opt-ins or orders, the very first thing you should do is check to see if your action sequences are still working properly.
One week, a client of mine called me. The PPC campaign and landing page I had designed for him were no longer working. In fact, he said, there had not been a single lead for an entire month!
Immediately, I realized this wasn’t a problem with the PPC campaign or the landing page. It was a problem with the action sequence.
With my client still on the phone (and speculating why the campaign wasn’t working), I quietly went to the landing page and entered my information in the form that offered a free consultation and hit submit.
Can you guess what the problem was?
- It wasn’t a broken form.
- It wasn’t a bad script.
- It wasn’t a missing piece of HTML.
It was simply that my client had canceled his Aweber account and had never updated the form code.
Even worse, my client had hired a company to manage his Adwords campaign… and they had NEVER tested the action sequence!
Talk about a careless mistake. Not to mention, super expensive, too! This particular client is in a market that often costs $5 a click or more. It’s not difficult for him to spend thousands on clicks each month.
I don’t know how much he lost before he called me, but I’m sure it was significant.
The bottom line: Never pay for advertising or traffic until you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that all of your action sequences are working smoothly and properly.
-Ryan M. Healy
