For opt-in marketing campaigns, there is nothing better than performing split testing. To enhance your website’s conversion rates, you must perform split testing and work according to the results you found after the test has been finished. Split testing could save a lot of your money and time as well. There is a reason why you need to be using split testing for your current and next marketing campaigns. Split testing is one that helps you make decisions based on the data it provides. This way, you are making changes based on the data and not being dependent on guesswork.
Apart from this, with the implementation of split testing, you are saving time and keeping yourself away from the case study trap. This is a common technique where people read other companies’ or competitors’ case studies to find out their tactics. So they can also implement it and get the same or better results. But these case studies are of no use, as they are both time-consuming, and in the end, you are not getting any evident information as to what you are doing correct or wrong.
Today, with the help of this article, we are here to showcase to you the importance of split URL testing and how it can help you achieve the goals you want for a website or a web page. In addition, we will also unravel the difference between A/B testing and split testing, as these two are used quite interchangeably. So let’s begin!!
What Is Split URL Testing?
Split URL testing, or just split testing, is one of your website’s most helpful optimization processes. With this, you get to test out the various versions of your website and compare them to find out which is more inclined toward your goal. With split testing, you can take two or more two variants of a single web page and then divide your traffic accordingly.
The thing about split testing is that it works differently for every business as no two businesses are the same in how they work. You cannot assume what works for your competitors can work for you as well. When you are performing split testing on the URL of a website, there could arise tons of different ideas. These ideas could be helpful in various ways and could lead to a big difference in your results.
We can take the example of American Bird Conservancy, which opted to perform split testing on its website. With the split testing results, the organization could increase its lead collection by over 1000%. Split testing is a practical process to discover what’s missing from your website. Depending on your requirements, you can choose a fully developed variant of your website or a web page during a split-testing process. The result of testing is to determine which variant is performing best based on the parameters you define for the test.
Benefits Of Split Testing?
Various brands are doing split testing on you right now, and you might not even know about it. As a digital marketer, the ability to find out whether something is working for a website or not is essential. And to find this out, split testing provides the most hassle-free way possible. It is crucial for both your website and for the user who is visiting your site. Given below, we have mentioned some of the advantages you get to experience when using split testing for a website.
1. Split Testing Is Easy To Perform
A lot of people believe split testing can only be done by a professional tester. But that is not true at all. There are hundreds of websites and tools present online that do the job for you. All you got to do is input your website and webpage, define your goals and start the test.
The results will be provided to you after the test; from there, you can make a clear decision whether the current element you are working with are better than the upgrade or not. Most of these split testing tools will be tailor-fit for your needs; choosing the suitable method ultimately depends on what you need in terms of the testing results.
2. You Are Taking Out The Guess Work From Your Marketing
When you are talking to a client who has given you work, they need to see the results, data, and quantifiable information. Split testing shows all of these, and you are not hanging by the guesswork in your field of expertise. You can look at the data and work accordingly. Split testing is like a learning process; you learn what your users want, what search engines are looking for, how you can enhance the conversion rates, and how to have a better click-through rate. The sooner you start to learn these things, the better results you will be able to get for your website.
3. Better On-Page Engagement
With the use of split testing, you are going to find out what users want when they visit your website. When you give users what they want, they are surely going to come back. In addition to this, they will surely recommend it to others as well if they are looking for the products, services, or advice in a specific niche in which you operate. As a result, you will have educated traffic on your website, and the bounce rate is also going to be less as they are specially coming for what you are providing in the first place. Moreover, this will also lead to an increase in your SEO performance, and your website will rank higher on the Search Engine Result Page (SERP).
4. Continuous Informative Data
Once the split testing starts, it will quickly provide you with the initial tracking of statistical flow. These statistical numbers will only increase with time and will be more precise according to your goal. In addition to this, this informative data will give you a deep insight into user behavior when they visit your website. Moreover, it also helps in the creation of user data along with a more holistic picture. These insights will influence your marketing campaign, and you can end up paying less for the same campaigns after processing the results in the right way.
5. Split Testing Can Be Done On Various Elements
Split testing is not limited to your web page or to its elements. It can be used to test out a better marketing campaign, fonts, text size, color, theme, search engine ads, and even on your paid social media campaigns as well. With the use of split testing, there will be a significant cut in waste of time and spending on your online marketing campaigns such as PPC, FaceBook Ads, LinkedIn marketing strategies, and more.
Difference Between Split Testing Vs. A/B Testing?
As you dig deeper into split testing, you will likely find that people tend to use split testing and A/B testing and vice-versa. The truth is, these two forms of testing are somewhat similar to one another, but there are certain things that make these two apart from each other. Let’s take an example to define these differences.
1. Split Testing
In split testing, you have a baseline, or we can say a controlled sample which is compared to the different versions of the same sample. This is done to compare whether the controlled sample is better than a new version.
Now let’s talk about the example; suppose you have a landing page and you start a social media campaign to attract users to it. With split testing, you will be directing 50% of the traffic on your landing page that has no change whatsoever. The other 50% of the traffic from the Ads is going to a completely different landing page. You will use the same conversion goals for both of these landing pages. However, the second landing page will have a different layout, photos, buttons, and even the URL.
Split testing is usually conducted when you are testing out a bigger change, such as a completely different landing page for your website.
A/B Testing
In A/B testing, the base sample is compared to a number of single-variable tests, which are being performed using the same sample to find whether the tested variable is providing any benefits at all. For the above example, if we go for A/B testing, the landing pages have to be the same with the only difference of a single element. You can change the color of your button, or it could use a different size of the text. The change has to be single or minute. A/B testing is used when you are making smaller changes to an already well-formed landing page or a web page.
You can use A/B testing after you are done with split testing, but not before. On the other hand, A/B testing in most common practices should be performed before you implement multivariant testing.
How To Perform A Split Test?
Now you know what split testing is and its importance, the next obvious thing to do is show you how to perform your first split testing. Before you begin the test, you need to understand what the end result is. As we said earlier, the result could be any element that appears on your website. Apart from this, if you are performing split testing for your email marketing campaign, you choose from the subject line, copy, image you are using, and more. To make your first split testing a success, there is a tried and tested procedure that you should be following, and it is written below.
Step 1. Observe & Collect Information
You first need to find out before anything else how your website is performing. Collect all the necessary user data such as where they are coming from, what elements they like most, where they click on your website and others. You will need all the data based on your set goal, and this phase is quite crucial as it will help you pinpoint exactly what you need to look for in the results. Look in your web analytics account and pay attention to different metrics.
Step 2. Create A Hypothesis
A hypothesis is basically an idea of why you see the results and what changes you can make in order to get better results. A reasonable hypothesis needs to specify your goals and ways to measure its success. You need to look for the issue your website is facing, the proposed solution for the same, and the success metric to measure the results.
Issue:- The issue could be as simple as people coming to your website and filling up the form you have included on the landing page. The hypothesis here could be the button that the user needs to click for the submission does not stand out from the background.
Proposed solution:- You come up with a solution such as changing the color of your background or increasing the size of your button or changing its color with something that contrasts with the background.
Success Metric:- The end result or the success metric is going to be defined as whether you are seeing a 10% increase in your form sign-ups from before.
Step 3. Run Your Split Test And Attain Useful Data
After the first two steps are done, the next thing you need to do is run the test for the desired amount of time. Now once the test is complete, collect all the data from the result and compare it with the baseline data that you have collected from step – 1.
Wrapping Up
We hope this article has helped you in finding the importance of split URL testing. In a nutshell, split testing is crucial, and it is the easiest way to find the things that are making a positive impact on your online business. With this testing, you don’t have to rely on guesswork and can actually see which of the following things are leaving a positive impact on your site.
If there is anything more that you want us to write about for split testing, feel to comment down below. Apart from that, we have several different split testing articles present on the website, take some time and browse through them; we believe you will indeed find out the other information that you are looking for in the field of split testing. Till then, run your own split test and share your findings with us.
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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.
