When you design an ad, a landing page, an email marketing, or a content template that calls for action, you often have to consider which images or content will attract users to click on.
But how do you know the answer? If you only use your intuition and speculation, the results will not be accurate. Instead of guessing, you can use a tool to know exactly what image patterns or content will impact user behavior, which is running A/B testing.
This article will help you understand what A/B testing is, why A/B testing is needed, and how to do A/B testing. Let’s find out with Ola City!
I. What is A/B testing?
A/B testing, also known as split testing, refers to a randomized experimentation process wherein two or more versions of a variable (web page, page element, etc.) are shown to different segments of website visitors at the same time to determine which version leaves the maximum impact and drive business metrics.
Essentially, A/B testing eliminates all the guesswork out of website optimization and enables experience optimizers to make data-backed decisions. In A/B testing, A refers to ‘control’ or the original testing variable. Whereas B refers to ‘variation’ or a new version of the original testing variable.
The version that moves your business metric(s) in the positive direction is known as the ‘winner.’ Implementing the changes of this winning variation on your tested page(s) / element(s) can help optimize your website and increase business ROI.
The metrics for conversion are unique to each website. For instance, in the case of eCommerce, it may be the sale of the products. Meanwhile, for B2B, it may be the generation of qualified leads.
A/B testing is one of the components of the overarching process of Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), using which you can gather both qualitative and quantitative user insights. You can further use this collected data to understand user behavior, engagement rate, pain points, and even satisfaction with website features, including new features, revamped page sections, etc. If you’re not A/B testing your website, you’re surely losing out on a lot of potential business revenue.
II. Process of A/B Testing
There are many different ways of implementing A/B testing, but what is the most effective way to implement the A/B Testing process? Here’s the sample A/B testing process you can use to start the test.
1. Data collection
Your analytics will often provide a sharp, clear view of where you can start optimizing. It helps you get started with high-traffic areas of a website or app. This will allow you to collect data faster. The search for pages with low conversion rates or high drop-off rates can be improved.
2. Identify goals
Your conversion goal is the metric you’re using to determine if the variant is more successful than the original. The goal can be anything from clicking on a button or linking to a sales website.
3. Creating a hypothesis
Once you’ve identified your goals, you can start creating ideas and theories about why you think they’ll be better than the current version. Once you have a list of ideas, prioritize them according to the expected impact level and difficulty of implementation.
4. Create variations
Use your A/B Testing software (such as Optimizely). This helps make changes at will to a component of your website or mobile app experience.
This may simply be:
- Change the color of a CTA button
- Swap the order of components on the page
- Hide navigation components or something that can be completely customized. Many of the top A/B Testing tools have intuitive editors that will make these changes easier. Make sure your test can work as expected.
5. Run a test
Start your experiment and wait for the user to visit. At this step, visitors to your website or app will be randomly designated to control or change your experience. Their interactions with each experience are measured, calculated, and compared to determine how each way works.
6. Analysis of results
When your test is complete, it’s time to analyze the results. Your A/B Testing software will output data from the test and show you the difference between how the two versions of the website are working. And is there a statistically significant difference?
III. Why should you consider A/B testing?
There are many types of split tests that you can run to make the test more valuable. Here are some common goals marketers have for their business when using A/B Testing:
Increased website traffic:
Testing different blog posts or website titles can change the number of people who click on that hyperlink title to visit your website. This results in increased website traffic.
Higher Conversion Rate:
Testing different locations, colors, or even anchor text on your CTA can change the number of people who click on these CTAs to get to the landing page. This increases the number of people filling out forms on your website, sending their contact information to you, and “converting” into leads.
Reduce bounce rate:
If your website visitors leave or exit quickly after visiting your website, do the test on blog recommendation posts, fonts, or images featured differently. This can reduce the bounce rate and keep more visitors.
Reduce cart abandonment:
E-commerce businesses say between 40% and 75% of customers leave the site while their items are still in the basket. This is called “cart abandonment” or “cart abandonment.” Testing different product images, designing payment pages, and displaying shipping rates can reduce this abandonment rate.
Hopefully, Ola City’s above sharing has helped you answer the question of what A/B testing is, as well as the A/B testing process and the inherent benefits. Hopefully Ola City can help you “pocket” the secrets to help support your marketing process more effectively. Good luck to you!
Best regards,
Ola City Global
