How to Use A/B Testing to Improve Your Website

Your website is driving tons of traffic from diverse sources but strangely enough, 99% of these visitors are not getting converted. Now, what good is traffic if your website is struggling to convert these visitors into paying customers. You have tried different things like changing the Meta tags, redesigned the website from the scratch but sadly enough, none of them has made any difference so far. You might be wondering what is stopping these people from contacting you via the contact form. Well, unless you run an AB test campaign, there is no way you can get to the bottom of this.

What Is AB testing and How Does it Help In Improving the Website

AB testing is a simple and straightforward process where two different versions of a landing page are shown to two sets of people. By tracking the activities of these people and by analyzing the interaction, marketers try to figure out the likes and dislikes of their targeted audience. This gives them an opportunity to test a new version of a landing page before making it live to all the visitors. The objective is to increase conversion, push engagement level and to give the ROI a shot in the arm.

Now the conversion metrics can vary depending on the website type. For e-commerce websites, product sale should be the ultimate motive behind running an AB testing campaign whereas, for a B2B website, it could be qualified leads. However, whatever the metrics are, the purpose of an AB test campaign is to help the website improve its design and structure.

AB Testing Process

AB test when driven by data and powerful analysis can do wonder. By testing different elements of the web page, you will be able to understand which design elements are contributing toward the ROI and which elements are distracting people from making vital decisions like filling out a form or making a purchase.

AB test usually includes the following steps –

Conducting Research – The very first stage of running an AB test campaign is to conduct extensive research. To analyse the behavior of the users and to track other metrics, you will have to use different website analysis tools like surveys, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Heatmap, Eye Tracking tools etc. You need to go through each single metrics that are available in the dashboard of these tools and then try to figure out why visitors are not converting.

Formulating a Hypothesis – Building up a hypothesis is important otherwise; your marketing strategy will fall flat because of no clear direction. By analysing the information available in these aforementioned website analysis tools, you will easily be able to build a hypothesis.

Creation of Variations – In the next stage of the AB test, you need to create multiple versions of the landing page and these versions should be in line with the hypothesis that you have built up in the earlier stage.

Start Test – In the next stage, you will have to flag off the AB test. You need to keep it running for some time otherwise you would have enough data in hand to analyse or to come to a definite conclusion.

Analysing – This is the last stage of the AB testing process. You need to stop the AB test and start analysing the data available in the dashboard. However, if the test looks like inconclusive, you might have to resume it for a few days more to get to a conclusion.

What Can You A/B Test?

Elements that directly impact the conversion rate and the behavior of online visitors should be targeted in AB testing. Here are some of the elements that can be AB tested –

• Headlines
• Awards and badges
• Testimonials
• Sub-headlines
• Call to Action text
• Content near the fold
• Content Above the Fold
• Paragraph Text
• Call to Action Button
• Links
• Media mentions
• Images
• Social proof

However, AB testing should not be limited to these elements. If you wish you can change the entire design and structure of the website, you can always go ahead and do it. The sky is the limit with AB testing. 

Why You Should be Doing AB Testing

Low engagement rates, high bounce rates, fewer conversions, high abandonment rate etc are some of the issues that plague almost all business organizations. eCommerce websites struggle with shopping cart abandonment rate, SaaS businesses struggle to increase the number of leads, bloggers find it really hard to increase the engagement level whereas general websites face an uphill battle with high bounce rates. AB testing can help them all but you need to know what you are doing otherwise all your efforts will go wasted at the end.

Here are some of the reason why you need to start doing AB testing –

With AB testing, you can create multiple versions of different elements of your website and then show them to the different group of people and observe their reaction. You can continue to create and test different elements of your website until you get a positive response from your target audience. Thanks to the tenacity of the AB testers, the website’s content gets more engaging, the bottlenecks get eliminated from the conversion path, the page speed sees dramatic improvements and the overall browsing experience gets a fillip.

Rather than changing the entire structure of your website and sending visitors into shocks, you should introduce incremental changes in the design. This process involves fewer risks as small changes don’t affect the conversion rate massively. If you find that the latest change is affecting the conversion rate negatively, you have the option to revert back to the earlier version and everything will be alright. This is a low and steady approach but believes me, this is a great strategy to improve the ROI of your website.