How detailed do you make Your Test Pages?

[Monkiii]

"I've made many proffesional webpages in my time, so this isn't a "How do I build a website?" or "How do I use Adwords?" post. I know how to do both of those. I'm skilled in both design and copywriting. I know how to make 3d product images. What I am wondering about though is that Tim mentions sticking up a testing site in 3 hours and I see some people posting they do it in 20 minutes. Trouble is it's taking me weeks.

Given that it takes professional copywriters around 40 hours to write a 1 page sales letter, and that it often takes hours just figuring out the details of what is and isn't going to be in a product, and that even small differences on a landing page create huge differences in conversion rates, I'm just having trouble seeing how a landing page could be made in 3 hours that showed more than .0001% of the actual sales you'd get from a finished page.

I've been testing pages for quite a while, but I've tended towards a near completed sales page (not product) when testing.I usually have product images, testimonials, risk reversal, feature and benefit bullets, the whole shebang. For testing though, it's slow creating sites that detailed, so I'm wondering:

How much detail to you put into your testing pages (links to some would be cool) and do you find you tend to still see "sales" at this level of detail?

Can you really turn out something of the level of pxmethod.com (Tim's example) in 20minutes-3 hours?

Remember I'm including everything, sourcing images, domain name, guarantee, figuring out the details of what the product is (pxmethod has descriptions for each CD). It seems unlikely to me, but I'm curious if I'm missing something here...

So do you:

Register a domain?
Add a theme to Wordpress / Joomla / Weebly?
Modify the theme at all?
Create a title?
Risk reversal text?
Sales button images?
Testimonials?
Images for the testimonials?
Bullet points for features?
Breakdowns for what each part of the product contains?
A section dealing with objections?
Credibility indicators?
Product images (CD / Folder / Manual design)?
Definitions and descriptinos of bonuses?
Specific numerical claims based on performance?
Automatically changing cutoff dates for offers?
Design a logo?
Come up with a tagline for the product?
Find stock images?
Define your pricing?
Figure out the products unique selling point?
Wite the actual sales copy?

PXmethod has all of these. At 180 minutes (3 hours) that would average no more then 8 and a half minutes each. If there's some way of getting this done in anywhere near 3 hours or less, I'd love to learn it! Remember, I'm not talking about the technical side here. I can set up wordpress in 3 minutes or less (and it's not on the list above). It's all the stuff that goes into the site that seems necessary, but takes me weeks currently.

I would really appreciate hearing how everyone is handling this, especially if you've managed to get a test that got enough pseudo-sales to be worthwhile (not just traffic).

Thanks!

[Musetester]

Monkii,

I'm making some additions to the client questionaire, but what will happen is after the client fills it out, the sales page will be assembled in this format:

Title
Product name input
one sentence product description input
Only {product price} (bold/italicized)
Buy now button

Sales pitch input
Risk Reversal Statement input
Only {product price} (bold/italicized)
Buy now button
Act (today's date) and receive: (bold/italicized)
Bonus Product offers inputs

Why your product inputs
Risk Reversal Statement input
Act (today's date) and receive: (bold/italicized)
Bonus Product offers inputs

Only {product price} (bold/italicized)
Buy now button

Testimonials with one image per testimonial (if inputs provided)
Only {product price} (bold/italicized)
Buy now button

What do you think?

[kamakiri]

Reread the section in the book about the Pareto Principle. Sounds like you are in analysis paralysis. Make a plan, stick with it and work through it. Kill the low hanging fruit first, and concentrate on the 20% that gives 80% of the results. With web sites it is more like a 15% : 90% ratio. Just getting it done is more important that any tweaking.

If you have a business plan, or even an executive summary in hand then most items on your list only take a few minutes. The upper limit is of course infinity, you can vacillate over a title all day and never finish if you try to be a perfectionist, but the fact is, you will never have it perfect, and it is an unreasonable goal.

ps who told you it takes 40 hours to copywrite a 1 page letter? They were probably trying to steal your money.

[seth121]

It shouldn't take that long to do a landing page. You may be getting low conversion rates simply because of the market you tried to enter. Picking markets that have buying intention saves you time and money and if you try to build a brand of a new type of product that hasn't been heard of then you will need significantly more money. It's constant tweaking and configuring your site until you see steady conversions, but the best thing to do is research your field as much as possible and see whether there is anyone buying online or just purchasing the product offline.