When you are conducting A/B testing, the most difficult part about the test will be identifying what to test in the production environment. Most developers or application testers have the same question in mind, “What do we test with A/B testing?” However, website testing comes with many confusions and questions and when you conduct your first test, you will have to follow some other tests to resolve the issues you have found from the first one. If you are a beginner in the A/B testing world, then there are some testing ideas that we can provide you with. Some of these ideas are more difficult than the others but you can perform them if you follow the guidelines properly.
What You Shouldn’t Miss When Conducting A/B Testing
When it comes to A/B testing, you should test every element on your website to find out if there is something you have missed to make it better. But if you are always thinking about finding a flaw and fixing it, then it does not help much with the A/B testing methodology. If you are always on finding and fixing terms, then you can miss out on the improvements that you can otherwise perform for the betterment of your application.
For example, suppose you have published an ebook that has many good insights about human psychology. You have created a landing page on your website to make a social presence for your ebook and your customers are clicking on it. In the initial stages, you will find customers who will click on the landing page and you can gain some conversions from it. But when everything goes well, you will become pickier about your marketing strategies and so you will try to focus more on the marketing department to gain more conversions. And with that idea in your head, you will begin to hunt for customers to buy your ebook.
If you offer your eBook for free for a certain amount of time, then you will be able to gain some conversions from it. But this strategy is not going to help you in the long term because if you sell your eBook for free, you will gain nothing. And in that case, you will have to brainstorm new ideas to create more sales. Sometimes your customers are not going to buy your ebook because they prefer video content or infographic instead, and so you will have to provide them with the content they are looking for.
With A/B testing, you will be able to test every element of your website starting from the headline and inside content that will help you create the highest conversion rates for your original product or service. The point is, that you should not limit yourself from improving your overall application or website by choosing to test just one element like the content or the website aesthetic.
Elements You Can Test with A/B Testing
When you have created an E-commerce website or a simple website, the first thing you’ll have to notice is how your visitors are behaving when they are visiting your landing page. Increasing your business’s traffic is not the only thing you should focus on but you should also concentrate on how your website is converting. If your traffic is not doing you any good, you need to learn how to use A/B testing continuously to increase your conversion rate. Here we have given some examples that you can try.
1. The CTA Option
Whenever you make a website or an eCommerce site, CTA buttons play a vital role in converting visitors into customers. Therefore, the size and color, and how your CTA button looks, matter. Most of the time the CTA button on your website needs to be prominent and attractive so that someone can easily know what the button stands for. If the CTA button is obvious, then your visitors can easily click on it without having to spend time searching for that particular button on your website. How big the CTA button should be on your website can only be determined after you have done your experiment with different sizes and colors. However, it does not mean that your CTA button will be bigger than your website or something that catches their eyes too quickly that it makes the visitors uncomfortable. Whenever you create a CTA button don’t just assume that it is attractive to drive conversions. Instead, you have to test the size of it to ensure that it will do its job.
2. Headlines
Landing pages mostly have different headlines and those headlines inform the visitors what they will find on the page. But how many words you are using on your headlines can be tested with A/B testing because it makes an impact on your visitors’ decision — whether or not they are going to stay on your site or leave. Moreover, your headlines need to be SEO-friendly and for that, you will have to craft your words thoughtfully. By running an A/B test on your headlines, you can paraphrase the heading and increase your conversion rates. You will have to write different versions of your headline and test each of them with A/B testing to understand which one will perform better to drive more conversion rates.
3. Promotional Content
Promotional content that is published on your landing page allows your visitors to determine if they are going to buy what you are offering. Therefore, promotional content will drive conversions but you cannot assume that they are going to create conversions without testing them with A/B testing. But most of the time promotional content on your landing page does not help you increase your conversion rate because when you have so much content on your landing page, your visitor cannot focus on the CTA buttons. That’s why you should make some efforts in removing unnecessary texts that might not be beneficial for your business. It’s not that you should discard all your promotional content. It’s just that you have to run an A/B test to see which promotional content is performing better than the others and for those that have no use, you can discard them.
4. Navigation Menu
Your navigation menu is the next important thing on your website that you must test using the A/B test method. The navigation menu helps your visitors find what they are particularly looking for on your website. With these menus, your visitors can jump from one page to another but if these menus are complicated then they can reduce your conversion rate. The more you can keep your navigation menu simple the better conversion rate you will get from your website.
5. Live Chat Option
Not every visitor that visits your website will turn into a customer and their reasoning for not purchasing any product from you varies from person to person. And most of the time you will not know why your customer left your site if you don’t ask them personally. But when there is a live chat option on your website, then you can survey your visitors and allow them to ask for help when they are browsing your product page.
Conclusion
Additionally, you can test your traffic source with an A/B test and make changes on your post-click landing page or modify your headline and feature image to improve your marketing campaign. The benefit of A/B testing is it allows you to understand what works best for your website but with A/B testing, you can also perform other split tests and enhance your website to boost your conversion rates. Your main focus should be to continue your A/B tests and not just stop after running one because the more hypotheses you have, the more tests you should run and after that only you can find out the most suitable result.
Simran works as a technical writer. The graduate in MS Computer Science from the well known CS hub, aka Silicon Valley, is also an editor of the website. She enjoys writing about any tech topic, including programming, algorithms, cloud, data science, and AI. Traveling, sketching, and gardening are the hobbies that interest her.
