What is A/B testing?
Think of A/B testing as an experiment; wherein two versions of a webpage or app are compared against each other to determine which one performs better. This practice can also be utilized for sales emails, or search ads. Despite being tedious at times, A/B testing is the ultimate way to pinpoint the best digital marketing strategies for your business.
How it works
A/B testing can be understood through a series of steps, pertaining to the page/ marketing material you’re testing:
Examine Current Data
Construct a Hypothesis
Test your Hypothesis
Analyze Test Data and Make Appropriate Changes
A/B testing is separated into two categories: on-sight testing or off-sight testing. For off-site testing, you’d be looking at ads or emails. Testing your sales emails is a simple off-sight A/B test to begin with. This is done by simply sending out two versions of a sales email to your list (randomly selecting which half gets which email), and then tracking which one converts better. The version that converts better, becomes the template for the one email you send to your list next time–copy-wise, design-wise etc.
For on-sight testing, you’d be looking at the sales-related pieces of your website. Think headlines, links, images, call to action buttons, ad copy, etc., the result of this test being your champion page; the final landing page with the most success, that stays put.
Select a tool
You’re going to want to select a good tool to help you perform your a/b website testing. Some examples to try include Visual Website Optimizer or Five Second Test. Getting a little help means you can spend your time honing the quality of your content, rather than figuring out the technical stuff.
Know your baseline
You should already know the current results you’re getting from the content you’re looking to test. And as well as testing option A against B, you want to know that whichever one does better in the test is also doing better than your current results.
A/B testing is a good way to keep out of the dark, digitally, in terms of how your business is attracting leads. With a few tests you’ll be able to figure out what is working–or not, and why. Maybe you just want to try something new, but aren’t sure how to evaluate if its successful. Whatever the reason, A/B testing can seriously improve your bottom line (so go for it).
