Read on to learn about how these two products are different and see which one comes out on top.

Overview

What the two products have in common (apart from the fact that all the developers involved are British) is that they let you create an aesthetically pleasing opt-in form that “pops up” in one way or another, when someone visits your site.

Let’s take a step back and look at what is necessary, in principle, to get someone to sign up to your mailing list. There are two main factors that come into play:

1. An Enticing Offer
   It goes without saying that if you don’t have an enticing offer, a good reason for people to sign up, then your list-building efforts are almost certainly doomed to fail. That’s not to say that a “sign up to my newsletter” message never works, it’s just that a “sign up to get X” usually works far, far better.
2. An Effective Presentation
   The second factor is how this offer is presented and that’s where these two plugins come in. And it’s also where the two plugins are most different.

Video Comparison

Instead of trying to express what these two programs do in writing, it’s a lot more effective to just show you what they do, on video:

And here’s a recap and overview of the two products:

PopUp Domination 2.0

PopUp Domination is all about delivering an enticing and attractive presentation. It creates lightboxes which are large, eye-grabbing and beautifully designed. You can use images and bullet points to create very professional looking opt-in forms, without needing any design-skills yourself.

There are seven different lightbox-designs to choose from and for each one, you can select a theme color and a button color. All of the text in the lightboxes (headlines, bullet-points, button-text) are customizable, but there are hard limits to the text. For example, if you choose a lightbox that supports a one-line headline and three bullent-points, then that’s exactly what you get. There’s no way to add a fourth bullet point. This is not a huge drawback, but it is something you should be aware of.

Here are just a few examples of what the PopUp Domination 2.0 lightboxes can look like (click to expand):

Digi List Builder

Digi List Builder has less emphasis on making the opt-in form look good (although they still are well designed) – you can upload a custom image (like an ecover image or a visual call-to-action), upload a custom button and input some text.

The focus with this plugin lies on how and where you can present your form to the site visitors and Digi List Builder offers four options:

• a lightbox that appears every X number of pageloads (you can set the number of pageloads)
• an opt-in box that appears at the end of each blog post, before the comments section
• a footer opt-in area that scrolls with the page (i.e. it’s always visible)
• an option that allows you subscribe people who comment on your blog to your list (can be unticked by visitor)

See the four variations below (click to expand):

Two more things are worth emphasizing about Digi List Builder: First of all, you can use any combination of these opt-in forms. Potentially, you can have all of them running at the same time, hammering your visitors with opt-in forms relentlessly (not recommended, but possible). Secondly, and this one is brilliant, anyone who subscribes to your list through Digi List Builder will henceforth no longer see the forms when they visit your site. This is extremely cool, as it allows you to crank up the “annoying” factor somewhat, without it turning off your subscribers.

Note that if you implement Digi List Builder on your site and you already have subscribers on your mailing list, they will still see the forms. The forms only vanish for those who opt in through Digi List Builder.

Conclusion

So, which one is better? Both of these products are very good in their own way, so I can’t make a recommendation for one over the other. The way I see it, which of these plugins is better suited for you depends on how you want to utilize them.

If you have a site that is purely built as a traffic-magnet, to get people on your list, then Digi List Builder is the better choice. On a site like this, you don’t have to worry about annoying people with the lightbox or footer opt-in, as you really want visitors to either sign up or leave, anyway.

If you have a blog where you are doing personal branding, then PopUp Domination might be the better choice, as it is easier to adapt to your site’s overall visual style and has more of a “wow-factor”. More advantages are that you can use PopUp Domination 2.0 on non-WordPress sites, you can specify specific pages and categories, if you don’t want the lighbox to appear everywhere on your blog and you can use it as an exit-popup.

Of course, one really pressing question is: What converts best? And I wish I had a few suitable sites where I could install these plugins and do some testing. Unfortunately, I don’t have any “list building” blogs. Having said that, I still intend to pick out one or two sites to do some testing with. The conditions won’t be ideal and the traffic volume won’t be huge, but it should be interesting to see some numbers, nonetheless.

Watch this space for updates.

Until then, you can check out both plugins below:

Read on to find out.

Overview

The first thing you need to know about this plugin is that it integrates with Google Website Optimizer and that’s a good thing. Like Analytics, Website Optimizer is a very powerful tool that you get to use for free, courtesy of Google (and their hunger for data). The thing is, GWO doesn’t usually play nice with WordPress and while there are integration options and even free plugins to help integrate the two, most of them still have some severe limitations.

So, let’s see if WP Split Test Optimizer can justify the asking price, compared to what free Optimizer plugins offer.

WP Split Test Optimizer Video

Here’s a video detailing what this plugin does and how it compares to the free ones that are available.

To recap, the WordPress Split Test Optimizer plugin has two advantages over free plugins:

1. It’s slightly easier to set up and manage. This isn’t a huge advantage, but it’s nice to have.
2. It allows you to very easily track clicks on particular links as conversions. This makes the plugin very useful for affiliate marketers. Unless you’re a coding Ninja, Website Optimizer is otherwise almost useless for affiliate marketing.

Conclusion

This plugin is being sold for $47 and while it definitely works as advertised and is a good product, I guess the main question would be: is it worth the price, compared to the free plugins available?

I’d say that depends mainly on how good you are at coding and how valuable your time is. To me, spending 50 bucks on a plugin like this is a much cheaper solution than spending hours fiddling with code (trying to get click-tracking to work, for example).

In general, if you want to start split-testing and you like to use WordPress, then this is a good solution. If you want to do more advanced, multivariate split testing and don’t mind spending more money on it, then my first recommendation would be ZenTester. For more “causal” use, WP Split Test Optimizer is the better choice, simply because it’s a solid solution and comes with a one-time price.

Click Here to Get Your Copy

I don’t really want to go in-depth on this, so let me just say: if you use or want to use any kind of tables on a WordPress site, do yourself a favour and get the plugin.

As you may already know, I personally like to use WordPress for building all kinds of marketing sites. From blog-style sites to squeeze-pages or sales-pages, with the right themes and plugins, WP can be the ideal platform for any kind of website.

In today’s review, I take a look at a new plugin called WP Split Test and as the name implies, this tool helps you set up and track split tests on your WordPress websites.

Overview

WP Split Test is a WordPress plugin which lets easily set up split-tests for posts and pages on a WordPress site. For more information on the point of all this, please check out my Split Testing Basics post.

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Installation and Setup

WP Split Test installs like any other WordPress Plugin and I had no difficulties activating it. Once the plugin is activated, you’ll find a new options tab in your WordPress admin panel, from where you can set up your A/B-tests.

You can set up as many different campaigns as you like and for each campaign, you can create up to four different pages. The pages are created in a simple editor, just like the one used for creating normal WP post. If you prefer, you can compose your pages in an HTML editor and copy-paste them into the WP Split Test editor.

In other words, you have complete freedom in creating your pages. There are absolutely no restrictions imposed by the plugin. Whether you want to test small changes like different titles or different order-button colours or make completely different pages (video sales page vs. text sales page, for example), you can do it using WP Split Test.

Once you’ve created your pages, you simply grab a small code snippet and insert that into a new WordPress post. You don’t need to add anything else but that code snippet to the post. Once it’s published, the plugin will rotate the different pages for each visit to the post.

Check out this video to see the plugin in action, plus a demonstration of the setup process:

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Tracking

Of course, just rotating page variations is only part of the equation for effective split-testing. You also need to be able to track conversion-rates so that you can determine which version of a page is the most profitable one. WP Split Test does click-tracking for your campaigns and interestingly, it tracks clicks within your page contents and also (separately) tracks clicks to your sidebar, navbar and footer contents. For your main page content, you can determine conversion rates simply by checking out the clicks you get to your affiliate link, order button or sign-up button.

Changes can be made on the fly, so if you see that one of your pages is a clear winner, you can give it more weight, deactivate all the other pages or make another minor change within seconds, from the plugin’s admin panel.

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Overall Rating

WP Split Test is a very solid plugin. It couldn’t be easier to install and set up, it rotates pages very cleanly (I like the fact that the URL doesn’t change) and it has no negative impact on page loading times, as far as I can tell.

In my previous post about split-testing, I’ve already expressed how important testing and tracking is for any kind of online money-making venture. You absolutely must do split-testing if you are serious about your online business and if WordPress happens to be your preferred CMS, then WP Split Test is the ideal solution for you.

This is for you, if:

• You like to use WordPress for your sales-pages/squeeze-pages/landing-pages
• You have monetized WordPress blogs or blog-style landing pages
• You are looking for a simple, easy-to-use split-testing solution

This is not for you, if:

• You already have a split-testing solution in place that you are satisfied with

Click the banner below to grab your copy of WP Split Test right now!

Here’s another video I made after a reader made a suggestion to me. Someone recommended the SEO Quake Firefox plugin and asked me if I could make a video about it. I took some time to play around with the tool and liked it quite a bit. Here’s the video I ended up making:

The plugin is mainly a website analysis tool, although it comes with a few features that go beyond that. While I always try to show both sides of a story, I can’t really find anything to complain about with SEO Quake. It’s fast and functional, you can easily deactivate it an re-activate it (so it’s data and toolbar doesn’t annoy you during regular surfing) and it’s completely free.

If you don’t have a program for analyzing websites yet, I recommend you hop over to the SEO Quake homepage and give this one a try.

Cheers,