Digital marketing is gaining more popularity among businesses due to its increased online presence. Companies are finding online platforms more suitable to cater to a broader audience. But how do marketers ensure which digital marketing strategy will work to attract as many audiences? One of the essential factors to be included in any digital marketing strategy is to conduct A/B testing to determine what will work and what not.
Digital marketing takes a lot of investment in terms of money, time, and effort. If you do not test every aspect of your ad or website, you might not get success and generate more leads. So every marketer must understand how to conduct A/B testing in marketing and how it will help their business grow and improve their website’s performance.
In this article, we will be focusing on the role of A/B testing in digital marketing, its benefits, the process of running A/B testing, and other information.
What is A/B Testing?
Every business in the market has different targets, so they might have different digital marketing strategies. It might also be possible that the same strategy might not work for every type of business. That is why you must understand which strategy works for your business. For that purpose, A/B testing is conducted, where marketers create two different variants of a single website. Those two variants will be accessible by the users and analyzed to understand which variant performs better to drive more customers.
The insights depend on how the visitors interact with the webpage to discern which variant is more effective. If we talk about digital marketing, you must check which element (landing page, ads, CTAs) substantially impacts customers.
Some people refer to A/B testing as split testing. With A/B testing, you can make major as well as minor changes on the same page rather than redesigning the whole page. Still, there is a thin line difference, as split testing includes testing the significant changes, such as redesigning landing pages and making them available to customers.
What are the Types of Tests?
A/B testing is not limited to comparing two different web pages against each other by changing a single element, such as an image or text. Based on the changes you would like to make on your website, A/B testing is of four types. Let’s understand each type of A/B testing one by one.
Variant A/B Tests: This type of A/B testing is the most common. It is also referred to as ‘Split Testing. In this type of testing, a single or set of changes is done on a webpage which is called ‘Variant’. This variant version is then presented in front of half of the total visitors. The other half is shown as the original version of the webpage. This type of testing allows you to test specific changes to an existing webpage without building a new webpage from scratch. Later on, using a selection of chosen metrics, performance is measured. The variant A/B testing enables you to test the changes in advance before implementing them for better results.
Multivariate A/B Tests: In this type of testing, lots of different changes are tested at one go without creating a web page from scratch.
Redirect A/B Tests: Sometimes many changes to a web page are not enough. In such cases, you would need to redirect the visitors to an altogether new and different page and then test the performance. This new page can have a completely new look. This type of A/B testing is known as Redirect A/B Testing.
Obviously, you would be required to provide an alternative page URL and also decide how to split your visitors. You can redirect 50% or 10% of visitors, depending on the importance of the web page.
Multi-Page Funnel A/B Tests: This is an advanced form of A/B testing. It can be a mix of the other A/B test types that are used on multiple pages. As the name of this testing suggests, it is often part of a funnel such as the sales process. Therefore, it requires making changes on a sequence of pages rather than one page. However, one should keep in mind that the number of changes should be limited in number for getting the performance result faster.
Why Conduct A/B tests in Digital Marketing?
For every business, digital marketing has changed the game, and it has become easier to reach thousands of people. One of the primary objectives of any business is to drive traffic to its business. You need to have a strong marketing strategy and set some objectives to help the business assess its profits at each stage.
Tech-savvy digital marketers use the best analytics tool to analyze the website’s performance. But what if your website is not getting enough traffic as expected? To analyze why a specific strategy is not working, you need to test different factors rigorously using A/B testing. A/B testing ensures success to much extent if you use the proper method to test different elements of your website. With A/B testing, you will get valuable insights into your customer’s behavior and interests. It also helps you avoid making major mistakes by relying on hard facts rather than making false assumptions.
Despite many benefits and easy testing processes, many businesses still neglect to conduct A/B testing and face unsatisfied conversion rates. For example, before running a display ad campaign, and directing visitors to the product page, you must A/B test that page to gather insights. Implementing the required changes to the page will increase the chances of converting visitors into loyal customers. We have listed some benefits below if you have not considered the benefits yet.
- Maximize ROI- Deciding on a digital marketing strategy requires a lot of investment, and every business wants a great return on it. But if you implement that strategy without testing its effectiveness, it is not sure if it works as per your expectations. But with the A/B testing process, you will understand how effective your strategy is and the success rate. Once you get the right strategy, you will get the maximum return on your investment.
- Reduces cost– Without testing the digital marketing strategy, sometimes you need to spend a lot by repeatedly changing your strategy to determine which works. But if you test every tiny aspect of your website, you will get a specific strategy for your business, and you only have to spend on implementing the specific strategy.
- Increases lead generation– Customers have different interests and understanding their interests should be the top-most priority of every website owner. But, how to get accurate insights into the customers’ behavior about how they would behave once they land on your website? You can conduct A/B testing to analyze the customer’s behavior. Then you can make required changes to the website and content to generate more leads.
- Sales closed– If you have an e-commerce website, the open sale is a nightmare for the owners. Most of the time, customers bounce back without making any purchase, leaving the sales open. But if you A/B test the page and understand what element affects the purchase, make the changes accordingly. It will help you to attract more customers, leading to more sales.
- High conversion rates– Many websites face low conversion rates and deal with other issues affecting their sales. But if you conduct A/B tests, you can identify the elements that contribute to more conversion. By finding the right combination, you can make your website more attractive, resulting in more conversion of visitors into customers.
What Elements to Test with A/B Testing?
While deciding on your digital marketing strategy, ensure that you properly use the website’s space and place meaningful elements wherever required for effective results. However, every element on the website is essential and contributes to the website’s overall outlook. But focusing on some of the elements is necessary as they bring the visitors close to you. Such elements can either make or break the website. So testing the effectiveness of such elements is necessary and crucial for generating leads.
Below are the elements that you must consider for A/B testing.
1. Headline
Headlines play an essential role as it is the first thing any visitor will notice about your website. It will appeal to your business customers if it is attractive or innovative enough. So put serious efforts while deciding on various heading options, and A/B test them separately to understand which headline is more effective in getting traction. If the headline is dull, visitors will not surf your website, and there will be no click-through rate.
2. Call-to-Action (CTA)
A call-to-action is the driving key to generating sales, as it allows visitors to take immediate action. A CTA should be enticing enough to attract customers. If the CTA button is not visible or does not match the website’s vibe, it would likely be ignored, or people will not be interested in going through it. You must A/B various test variations of the CTA button and analyze which one performs better and has a high click-through rate. Even a tiny change in the CTA button can change the game.
3. Audio, Video, and Images
Having a dull website does not compliment your outstanding content. You should have some exciting content to keep your visitors engaged. You can simply add images, videos, and audio related to the content, adding value to your website. But what combinations of all work? You need to A/B test those variations to get promising results.
4. Quality Content
Having lengthy content does not work if it does not make any sense or is not up to the expectations of the customer’s interest. But suppose you want to have a piece of detailed information on a specific topic while maintaining the quality. In that case, you must A/B test the content size and analyze the customer’s behavior about the size of the content.
5. Product Description
For e-commerce websites, one of the crucial things that impact sales is the product description. You must A/B test the different versions of the product description and analyze which version is popular and improves sales. Make sure it is attractive and convincing enough to proceed with the purchase.
6. Landing Pages
A landing page is a deciding page if the customer wants to subscribe to the page or continue to make the sale. If the page is dull and does not blend well with the brand, it needs to be changed. So, you need to A/B test different landing page elements and analyze which version is getting more traffic and sales. Later, make the required changes to get the expected outcomes.
Simple Steps to Conduct A/B Testing in Marketing
Different companies have different virtues and might follow different strategies to conduct the A/B test. This may lead to varying results depending on their testing requirement. Most companies ignore A/B testing, thinking it is time-consuming and costly. It might be a lengthy process, but it is compelling enough to save you a fortune rather than having a failed business.
To ease your confusion, we have mentioned simple steps that you can follow to carry out the A/B testing process. Let’s get started.
1. Set Objectives
Before conducting an A/B test, you must know what element you want to check or what website feature you need to test. Setting objectives will help you access your progress, and reaching your goals will be easier. So select the crucial elements and get started.
2. Creating Hypothesis
Start working on creating a hypothesis that proposes new variants with required changes and why you believe it will give you promising results. For example, your landing page is not good.
Hypothesis 1 – You have a poorly organized landing page, and you know that setting things on the right page and an attractive lead generation form will work in getting traffic.
Hypothesis 2 – The color of the CTA button makes the button look dull and is not persuasive to take action. You can test such types of elements.
3. Create Variants
You know what changes you need to make in your variants as you have created the hypothesis. Create different variants based on the hypothesis. You can create variants using CRO tools that will automate creating variants.
4. Split the Audience
After creating variants, it is time to configure and run the tests. For that, you need to split the audience among the variants equally. Your website must have enough traffic to be equally divided to get accurate results. Again, you can do it using CRO tools that allow the marketers to customize several factors, such as which audience will see which variant.
5. Analyze the Results
The tests have been run, and you need to analyze them to get valuable insights and take action based on those results. It will help you understand which variant is a success. With CRO tools, you can measure the conversions of both variants and determine which hypothesis was correct. You can also use statistical methods to get to the result.
But it is the simplest way to conduct A/B testing. You must ensure the test runs its course. Otherwise, you will get vague results and need to repeat the process.
How Long Should Your A/B Tests Run?
The duration of running an A/B test is not important because if only five people visited the page while running the test for one month then you won’t have any conclusive results. It is very important that you expose a significant number of users to each variation of your website or webpage. Only then you will get accurate and useful results.
You should run the A/B test for such a long period that there is no convergence of results between the two variations. If any evidence of results convergence is noticed, it means that the variation did not have a significant impact on the metric that you are tracking. Run the A/B test as long as you have a steady flow of traffic on the website variants.
Also, we recommend you go through the A/B testing examples of other websites whose findings have been published by various companies on marketing blogs to benefit others. You need not follow their A/B tests blindly. Go through the results to get an idea of what to expect.
Conclusion
Digital marketing is the new marketing trend that is far more effective than traditional marketing, and A/B testing has added value to it and enhanced the performance of any website. There is no doubt about the effectiveness of A/B testing in optimizing digital marketing results. It helps marketers create website variants and determine which variant performs better to generate more leads. Hope this article will help you to understand why A/B testing is essential and the simple steps to conduct A/B testing. If you still have any doubts or queries, do mention them in the comments section. We will try to respond to it at the earliest.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Why do we do A/B testing?
Marketing is not limited to creating a website and starting an email marketing campaign. To understand whether the created website is customer-friendly or not, you need to conduct A/B testing. A/B testing allows you to know what content, images, videos, testimonials, and other elements work the best for sales improvement.
2. When should we use A/B testing?
If there is a sudden dip in sales, website traffic, or conversion of visitors into buyers, you need to conduct A/B testing to improve your conversion rates and boost your bottom line. A/B testing also facilitates determining the right marketing strategy for your business.
3. What is A/B testing in Marketing Cloud?
When two variables of your email message are sent to two different test audiences from your subscriber list then it is called A/B Testing in Marketing Cloud.
4. What is an A/B campaign?
When two versions of a marketing campaign are sent to a small percentage of subscribers from your subscriber list then it is called A/B Campaign. The result is measured in terms of most clicks or opens.
5. When should you not perform an A/B test?
You should not conduct an A/B test on your website if the number of visitors to your website is not enough if you don’t have time to spend if you don’t have an informed hypothesis, and last if you have no reason.
My name is Vijay Singh Khatri, and I enjoy meeting new people and finding ways to help them have an uplifting experience. I have had a variety of customer service opportunities, through which I was able to have fewer returned products and increased repeat customers when compared with co-workers.
