First impressions matter, except when you’re looking for a problem worth solving. In that case, split testing your landing pages is a complete waste of money.

Traditionally, you’d use split testing to optimize your landing page. Help it turn traffic into conversions. Your user gets your message. The user experience communicates your message in the stickiest way possible. This tool assumes, though, that you know who you’re selling to, what they need, and roughly what you’re offering.

Why does this matter?

Well, if you don’t know what you’re selling yet, you’re losing money by split testing–when you need it the most. You’re lighting dollar bills on fire and throwing them off your pretty balcony.

Before you optimize your message, you’re better off proving that you have audience-problem-solution fit…first. That’s the whole point of Landing Pages as an experiment or a landing page MVP ( minimum viable product).

Let’s say you have a budget of $200. You still haven’t proven specific people will pay money for your product idea. In that case, you’re better off testing two completely different ideas. That way, the higher conversion rate helps you identify which one is better “raw material”.

“Go” or “no-go”. Not A vs B. And only “Go” on the best one.

Instead of split testing two variants of one idea (comparing A to B), figure out which of 4 different “As” makes your target audience drool the most.

Here’s the deal:

If start with a high conversion rate out of the gate, optimizing it will give you even more bang for your buck later. It’s better to start with a handful of ideas and figure out which one has the best conversion rate right from the beginning.

Better yet, focus on one audience, and pitch them a variety of ideas to see what makes them click.

If you want to find out more about how to construct proper Landing Page MVP experiments, then my book Launch Tomorrow aims to please.

It’s available over here.

You see, landing pages MVPs are experiments, NOT landing pages. Knowing how to construct these kinds of experiments can save you some serious cash.

It’s also a very different mindset than what you’ll find anywhere else on the web about landing pages. All the way down to the knitty-gritty of how you analyze your results.