Choosing what to A/B test and what you can test.
An A/B test is a controlled method of testing different areas of marketing most commonly known for conducting tests on a website. It gives you the ability to split your website traffic into two or more groups. Each group will then see a different version of your website depending on the changes made. Group A will see the control version which is what’s currently live on your website without any changes whereas Group B will see a version of the site with the changes applied.
The first step in conducting an A/B test is deciding what you want to test and looking for potential improvements that could be made on your website, either to improve the user experience or increase your conversions. Which brings on nicely to the next stage of A/B testing which is deciding how you will measure the success of your test. For example, are you looking for more clicks on a button or wanting to see if changing the copy on a page increases conversions.
When it comes to A/B testing there are multiple things you can test across your marketing from a button on your website to images on a social post.
Here are a few examples of A/B tests:
- Changing a form on your page to see which version generates more conversions.
- Posting on social media with different captions to see which generates the most interactions and traffic to your site.
- Simply changing the colour of a button on your site to see if it generates more clicks can be another simple but effective test.
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What is the process of A/B testing?
Once you’ve decided on what you’ll be testing and how you will measure the success of your test you can then move on to creating the test. When creating the test for a website it’s important to ensure that the test works for both mobile and desktop, as you don’t want it to have a negative effect on the user experience.
It’s important to remember that when conducting an A/B test only to test one variable on your website and you shouldn’t have multiple tests running at the same time. As each variable could have a significant impact on your website and the final results will be unreliable as you won’t know which variable had the greatest impact. It’s also best to allow your A/B test to run for a significant amount of time as this will give you a clearer idea on how successful your test was.
The benefits of using A/B testing.
A/B testing is a great way to learn more about your audience and maximise the value of your existing traffic. By testing out different content layouts and navigation structures you can begin to learn how your audience uses your site or what content gets the most engagement. From this, you can start applying changes across your marketing to better target your audience and enhance the user experience.
Through identifying areas of improvement such as CTA’s and testing them to improve user engagement and click-through rates (CTR). A/B testing can lead to higher conversion rates and give you greater insight into how to better attract your audience. This is why it’s important before A/B testing to identify your goals and what you hope to achieve from the test.
Making changes to a website can often be time-consuming especially if that change then has a negative effect on the site. A/B testing is a great way to test new features on a site with low risk because if it’s starting to have a negative impact you can turn the test off.
If you want to explore A/B testing why not get in touch with us.
