The time is finally here. You’ve been invited to a dinner with the person you’ve been crushing on forever. This comes with a lot of stress because you want to look your best and make sure your first impression immediately blasts them away. You’ve tried on multiple outfits, different accessory combinations and practiced your best jokes to make a lasting impression on your date.
This all sounds evident and funny when talking about something as simple as going on a date, but are you putting in the same work to make that perfect impression on your website visitors?
Making small changes to the elements on your website to come to the perfect fit for your audience is just like finding the perfect outfit for your date. The only difference is that it’s called A/B testing in fancy marketing terms. Running A/B tests gives you a clear overview and allows you to make decisions based on data instead of your gut. Numbers don’t lie, and if you’re not A/B testing your website, you’re losing. Just try different versions and build on data to eliminate all the guesswork of optimization.
What is A/B testing?
A/B testing, also known as split testing, compares two versions of a web page, email, or any other marketing asset. The A-version is your original or ‘control version.’ This is the one you’re trying to decide for if it needs a change and if the change you’re about to make improves the metric you have in mind. The variation you’ll be testing against is the B-version of your website.
You’ll launch two different designs, showing the original version to 50% of your audience and the variation to the remaining 50% of your visitors.
The purpose of split testing is to see and measure the difference in the performance of both versions and to decide what works best before finalizing the implementation on your website. The metric you’ll be tracking to determine your success depends on the industry, and the goal you’re trying to reach with your website or emails. In eCommerce, the focus usually lies on generating more sales. At the same time, B2B industries are generally more interested in generating sales qualified leads, and recruitment agencies want to attract suitable applicants.
Your modifications shouldn’t stop after one A/B test. You should constantly test your pages to improve your marketing and advertising content continually.
A prime example of a company that is constantly A/B testing its platform is Netflix. One way they run A/B tests is by constantly adapting the cover photos of their content to analyze what works best and what picture makes people watch a certain show.
How does it work?
You can test everything from the wording to colors, images, videos, banners, and every other element your page contains. Even the smallest changes can have a tremendous impact on your conversion rate.
However, the most important thing to keep in mind here is to only change one element with each different test.
This is important because if you change several things simultaneously, you’ll never really know what impacted the change, or the multiple changes might work against each other.
To measure the impact of your change correctly, it’s important to make sure that equal numbers of people saw the different versions and that you ran the test long enough to make adequate conclusions.
Some readers might be terrified by now because you’re already thinking about the coding that will be involved when testing and updating your mailings or website. Don’t panic about any of that. Nowadays, there are easy-to-use tools that will enable you to tweak your pages in the blink of an eye without any code involved.
What elements you should be A/B testing
Just as your perfect outfit consists of different pieces and accessories, so does your website. There are a lot of different elements to take into account when deciding what to split test.
Essential elements to A/B test are the following:
Headlines and copy
Call to actions
Images, banners, and videos
Product descriptions
Subject lines
Forms
Shopping carts
Let’s take a closer look at each one of them.
1. Headlines & copy
Did you know that 80% of all readers never make it past the headline? A headline is usually the very first thing someone gets to see and registers when visiting a website. This also means that it often decides whether or not a visitor will read the rest of your page or will bounce. Make sure your headline immediately grabs the attention and gives a clear idea of what you’re all about.
Putting a solid value proposition in your headline or triggering your readers’ curiosity are great ways to keep them engaged. You can test two completely different headlines, but this isn’t always necessary. Even changing a single word can have a massive impact on your conversion rate.
Another element to think about is the copy on your website and the message you’re trying to deliver. This goes hand in hand with your headline, having a compelling headline without decent copy to support it will make your visitors bounce as well. It’s essential to think about the paragraph lengths and the wording you’re using. Some audiences convert more with lengthy and detailed mailings or websites simply because the industry requires more detailed information. On the other hand, other audiences don’t like it when there is too much information and just want to get the gist of what you’re trying to say.
2. Call to actions
The call to action is the most crucial element, as seen from the business side. This is what you eventually want your audience to see, and more importantly, interact with.
You need to clearly communicate what you want your visitors to do and offer something of that much value they won’t be able to resist your offer.
A/B tests for call to actions go a lot deeper than simply testing the wording. Try changing the place of your CTA button or tweaking the color or size. This can make a huge difference and can drastically improve your conversion rate. As discussed before, don’t change too much at a time. If you’d like to change multiple things to your CTA, do this step by step because otherwise, you won’t know what exactly made the difference.
3. Images, banners & video
Our brains can interpret visual content like images much quicker than text, which is why visual content can communicate or amplify your message instantly.
As discussed earlier, this is one of the most important tests Netflix has been running. They have been showing different banners and images for the same show to their audience with different interests, watching behavior, during different parts of the day etc. to analyze what makes most people click and watch the show. The idea is to see what images work best for your audiences and makes them click through or keeps them on your page.
Other options you could test are to see if including an image, banner, or video improves the conversion rate or if it causes distraction and actually makes people bounce more easily.
4. Product descriptions
This might feel similar to reviewing the wording and copy on your website, but this part specifically targets the product details and descriptions. This depends from industry to industry, though. Industries with complex products or services might need to use longer product descriptions than industries with relatively easy products or services.
5. Subject lines
With the average person receiving more or less 100 emails a day, you quickly get lost in the overcrowded mailbox of your audience nowadays. On average, 33% of people decide whether or not they’ll open an email solely based on the subject line.
As you can see, there’s a lot at stake when it comes to subject lines, and what to do with them shouldn’t just depend on your gut feeling. A/B testing them gives you a clear view of the effect because numbers never lie.
The first step to focus on is choosing your audience and what specific segment you’d like to address. This is important to understand what subject works with your unique audience and what the best way to target that particular audience is.
The next step is deciding what aspect you’ll put to the test. Be it the subject line’s wording, length, personalization, or the design (all caps, emojis, …).
6. Forms
Forms are pretty tricky, you want to collect as much information as possible about your future lead but at the same time you also don’t want to scare them away with a lengthy form that will take up too much of their time. This makes it hard to decide when less is more and when you’re going too far.
Test different parts of your form to determine what works and what doesn’t, and eventually, get the perfectly composed form.
There is no standard for the size of a form, but in general shorter forms tend to have a higher conversion rate. Experiment with the size to see what works best for your audience and prioritize which fields are necessary, and which aren’t. By doing so and A/B testing these changes, you can easily see if leaving some fields out of your form positively impacts the completion rate.
A/B testing your forms furthermore is a great way to identify possible bottlenecks. These are fields that keep a user from completing or submitting a form. A classic bottleneck is a field that asks for a phone number because we don’t like sharing this info with a stranger.
Test your fields for possible bottlenecks, and consider removing them if they aren’t an essential part of the form.
7. Shopping carts
This is the ultimate test where all the tests discussed above come together. Putting your shopping cart through some A/B tests is one of the most important tests for eCommerce businesses. This is where you want your visitor to end up eventually and get them to complete their purchase.
Experiment with the colors of your buttons and where they’re placed on your website. Furthermore, you can test if adding elements or removing them has an impact on your conversion rate. Play with the messaging on your page and the copy on the buttons to make your conversion rate as high as possible.
Most important lessons to keep in mind
Let’s take a final look at the most important steps to take when implementing an A/B test on your website or email campaign:
1. Clearly define what you want to test and set your goals.
2. Adapt the page you want to test, but only change one element per test.
3. Run the test long enough and for a big enough audience to come to a valid conclusion.
4. Analyze both tests.
5. Implement the most successful version.
6. Start over again and test another element.
There is no general rule when it comes to improving your pages or mailing campaigns, though. Every industry has a different audience and customer segments that react differently to changes. Test and keep on testing to see what works best for your specific audience and grow your business based on data instead of your gut feeling.