A/B Testing in Marketing: The Most Powerful Tracking Tool
A/B Testing in Marketing: The Most Powerful Tracking Tool
A/B testing in internet marketing is becoming increasingly common and is a great way to make changes and adjustments to your site with little cost. A/B testing (aka Split testing) is a method of testing two versions of a page to various segments of site visitors at the same time and comparing which version drives more sales. And one of the best methods to optimize your online site for future profits is A/B testing. This article explains why testing your web pages is essential, what the benefits are of A/B testing, and how you can implement this method on your site. After reading this article, you should be able to better understand what A/B testing is, why it’s important, and how you should use it to boost your web traffic and profits in today’s market.
So, what exactly is A/B testing? It is simply testing your web page against several different versions of the page over a period of time. The purpose is to discover which version of your page provides the most benefit to your visitors, and therefore increases your conversion rates. Typically, you will want to test different versions of your page on a regular basis, especially early on during your development process, when you may be making changes to the layout and functionality of your page in order to provide your visitors with the best user experience possible. But you don’t want to limit yourself just to testing layouts; you should also A/B test your pages against different keyword and title texts.
Keywords and titles are extremely important elements of your sales copy, because these items will generally be the only thing that your visitors see before they even reach your landing page. So it makes sense that you’d want to test these elements across different versions of your page, to determine which one is providing you with the best overall conversion. A good rule of thumb is to always A/B test your landing and home pages (if you have them), against three different versions of your pages.
A good way to think about it is that you’ve written the best page copy for your site, but you’re not getting any results. Why is this? Because your page copy has been poorly tested!
So, how do you make sure that your pages are well-testing? You need to split test all of your pages against each other. Split testing is simply a method of determining which version of your page copy is generating the best results from your efforts – and then repeating those tests across all of your pages.
So, what do you need to A/B testing? In order to perform A/B testing effectively, you’ll need to first consider exactly which pages are performing the best. You can easily determine which ones are performing exceptionally by testing on them one at a time. For example, if you’ve written a great sales letter, you might want to split test it on a couple of different pages to ensure that it converts well. You can also split test your product pages.
Next, it’s time to split test everything else in your site. If you’re seeing conversion rates that are too high, you need to re-tailor your page copy or move on to another product. If your product is performing below average, then it’s likely that the template you used is faulty. You might even be branding your pages incorrectly – for example, if the URL is a direct sales URL, you might be marketing your product to potential buyers who aren’t in your email database. Whatever the case, it’s important to isolate the problem and address it.
If you’ve found errors in your copy, then you’ve got plenty of work ahead of you. But don’t panic! A/B testing is a powerful marketing tool that allows you to get quick feedback on the effectiveness of your campaign. If you’ve done it right, you can quickly move on to testing another element of your marketing strategy. Hopefully, that the next thing will bring you even more success!