Do you want to make a substantial impact on your online marketing initiatives? Advancement in technology has made it such that we no longer have to reply on opinion in making strategic design decisions. This is why many people are jumping on the a/b testing bandwagon and reaping the benefits thereof. In the domain of e-commerce, this tool is more important than ever in generating sales and increasing revenue. With a host of variables to test – from pricing to product categories to ratings, the potential for improvement is abundant.
A/b testing allows you to understand how small changes to your site will affect direct sales, making the effort a great investment of your marketing dollars.
The following should be tested in optimizing your e-commerce website:
The Button That Yearns for Action
Perhaps the most important element on an e-commerce website, the call to action button ensures you receive the conversion you need. The varying ways to design the call to action ensures questions should arise. How big should the button be? What color? What should the text be?
Does Size Matter?
While there are no hard rules in regards to the button size, a size of 230px wide and 45px wide is a good rule of thumb to start with.
Where Should We Place Them?
Your button’s placement should follow the natural flow of the eye. To start, place one call to action above the fold as this is where most activity takes place.
Text Size
You want to sound inviting enough to elicit an immediate response from the visitor. Everyone surfing the net wants to be sure before committing to something, so be sure to test your text to ensure see which gets the most responses.
Pricing Strategies
Remember to test the pricing of your button as well, as the right price will instantly motivate the user to buy.
The Myth of .99
In some instances, having the price end in .99 will increase sales? Will this strategy apply to your e-commerce website as well? Set up some a/b tests to see.
Pricing Boxes, Where Should These Go?
Conduct some A/B tests to determine the best placement for pricing boxes in relation to other elements on the page, such as text and images. You want to create a natural flow to the page which will guide the user to these boxes and elicit an action.
Search Results and Product Displays
There are many online resources to consult, such as the The Maxymiser A/B testing guide that’ll give you an estimate of what products to display on your site as well as how many of them. Additionally, test the order of your search results and the number of them to reach an agreeable number. Your goal is to gain the user’s trust through a satisfactory user experience, so test often.
To compliment you’re A/B testing efforts, use your Google Analytics account to gather key information about search page abandonment, bounce rates and exit rates, and other sensitive information. When used together, these
How Often Should I Test?
To see the most impact across the board, be sure to test often. The outcomes of your tests will either be no result, a negative result, or a positive result. The only way you’re going to achieve the results you’re looking for is if you test often to ensure an increase in conversions.
To get started, make sure you employ testing as soon as you launch your site. Early testing ensures you don’t lose any sales from results that weren’t implemented right away.
How Long Should I Test?
There are no hard and fast rules in terms of stopping an A/B test, however, you don’t want to end too early and risk losing out on important information you would have received had you waited longer.
Conversely, testing for too long can mean losing out on sales you would have gained had you switched over to the new design earlier.
Conclusion
Sure you have a lot of traffic! Sure you’re ranked number on Google Search, but let me ask you a question, are you making the amount of sales that your website deserves? That’s the point of A/B Testing, the large amount of traffic will bring you all the visitors window shopping, but with A/B Testing, you’ll be able to nit-pick the small things that will grab your visitors’ attention.
On your website, everything matters and I mean… EVERYTHING! The layout will make it easier for your visitors to navigate, the size of your text with the combination of the size of your action buttons will make it easier for your visitors to take action, and even simple things like putting .99 on your prices make a difference. It’s human nature to be analytic, but we’re also such very visual creatures that going by what we see makes it more attractive to hit the buy button. A/B testing will help you decide what to do with your high traffic website and any questions you have in terms of placement, color and all that will surely be answered by split testing.
Have any questions about A/B split testing? Go ahead and shoot them my way in the comments section.
Guest article written by: Ruben Corbo is a freelance writer that writes about technology, gaming, music, and online marketing especially topics about A/B Testing and multivariate testing. Ruben has written several online marketing articles related to the topic of converting traffic to sales which you can find out more novice information on [tp lang=”en” only=”y”]Maxymiser[/tp][tp not_in=”en”]Maxymiser[/tp]. When Ruben is not writing he is composing and producing music for short films and other visual arts.