Get Smarter Business Outcome with Simple A/B Split Test Strategies

Debarup Mukherjee | April 11, 2016 | Digital Marketing | No Comments

How would you know whether a newly developed website is a success or not? Is your website communicating with your visitors the right way? If not then you seriously need an A/B testing to perform. A number of business websites have started using the A/B test to increase their profits and get the most out of their website traffic.

A Quick Test between A and B

A/B testing is an essential strategy and can test anything pertaining to your website –landing pages, web copy, email, search ads. You can even collect audience feedback, scale your company’s growth and get hold of early customers.

In short, with A/B testing you can get to put to test and see which version works better depending on the metric that you are using to measure.

How does this Work?

Let us experiment with two versions of design for the ‘Add to cart’ button of your website. The first version is the existing one, which you are presently working on. The second version is the variant, which you want to implement.

Now, you want to see which version is more visitor friendly. Divide your traffic into two sections and direct them to page A and B. Now see, which version is likely to generate more number of clicks thus increasing your profits.

Some common metrics for a website that are put to measurement includes the conversion rate, CTA or call to action, bounce rate, CTR or click through rate and sales. Apart from this, layout design, style pricing, promotions, headlines, copywriting, images are some of the other elements, which are also put to test.

Once the test is done, you select the one that receives the highest result and use it for your successful eCommerce business.

Does All A/B Test Give Out Positive Results?

A/B testing can turn out to be an invaluable tool when implemented properly.

Here are some tips, which you can follow to run a proper split test that will produce a better business output:

#1. Think Over a Hypothesis You Wish To Test

It is crucial that you have a particular hypothesis before you start with your split test. Having a clear notion as to what kind of result, you wish to see, will give you a better idea of how to approach with your test. It is not just about changing the button of your PayPal plug-in or the typography of your website’s text. There is more to it.

Before you start with your split test, ask yourself why you want to do it. What are you expecting from the test result? Will a subtle change to your copy, make a huge impact to the number of visitors clicking on your site? On the other hand, do you think that by changing the ‘sign up’ button from green to red will increase the number of visitors turning into customer?

#2. Segment Your Visitors According To Their Motives

Different people coming to your website, have different purposes that you need to serve. So why run the same test on the web traffic as a whole? Of course, a person looking for a job vacancy notification in your website will not have any use with your eCommerce service. A person, who is coming from a search ad, will come to your website in search of something. On the other hand, a person coming from a banner ad must have come to know about your site while they were doing something else, like reading one of their favorite blog.

Segmenting your traffic is not hard. With the availability of user-friendly web analytics tools, it has become easy to segment your data without the need to master up the Structured Query Language. You can easily avail your A/B split testing tool from the market or can consult an A/B split testing consultant to segment your traffic according to the type of traffic, location, referring URL, etc.

Try to focus on the following key strategies to segment your traffic

A. Source: There are people coming from Twitter, Facebook, email campaigns, banner ads and other areas. By segmenting these various segments, you will be able to analyze some key difference, which will help you to understand what the customer wants. Find which segment has the number of bounce rates, what kind of product will people coming from a banner ad want, compared to those who enter your site through paid search.

B. Behavior: You can segment your traffic based on their behavior. Notice, which website page receives the maximum number of clicks. Separate them based on price comparison. See how many of them visit your ‘products’ page twice a week and how many visit more than that.

C. Outcome: Here, you have to differentiate your customers by the type and number of products they buy. How many of your customers buy only trinkets and how many of them have an ‘elephant-sized’ shopping list.

#3. Test One Business Element at A time

While testing everything is not a wise thing to do, it is best to test one element at a time. This will reduce unnecessary time consumption and help your business to grow by making catering to the needs of your customers. Most eCommerce websites face a common problem of visitors, reluctant to go beyond the check out page. Make a survey if you too have the same problem. Chances are that they do not find an appropriate trust seal to rely on. Test your customer testimonials and include a quoted sentence with a figure like – “Over 7000 orders completed for this month” or maybe “Over one million customers who trust our service”.

#4. Be Patient to Achieve a Significant Statistical Outcome

Trust a result that gives out enough data. The more the data, the more will be your outcome. With A/B split testing, you will get to know about the statistical value and compare it with the previous data. The other possibility is to use a split testing duration calculator. With this, you get the data by calculating the number of days for which you want to run a test. In this way, you can get to judge your business outcome properly.

#5. Do Not Be Stubborn With What You Believe In

This is crucial, as your results might not always match with your hypothesis. Some marketers have been tempted to shove off the test result and follow their own beliefs. Beware! This will lead to your doom. Moreover, if you are too stubborn to accept a different outcome, then why did you go all the way to perform an A/B split test? Is it that you expected to prove your own accuracy? Well, sorry that it has proved to be otherwise. The key bring success in your business, is to take your business decisions based on your test data. If you are not convinced with the outcome then run a test again.

#6. Have a Holistic Approach to Analyze Your Test

Most of us have a common problem. We fail to look at the bigger picture. If the reduction in the number of fields present in the form led to an increase in the number of applications, then we get the notion that it must be because the form had fewer fields that made filling up quicker. What we do not think is that, maybe there was one particular field which applicants were reluctant to share with us. Try to evaluate as to why the removal of a particular field affected the conversion rates. If possible, replace the current fields with the ones that you have removed and run a test. You will get a better learning.

Check out the text written for a headline. It is always better to write “Create Your Own eCommerce Store in 5 Minutes” and not “Step by Step Procedure to Create Your Own eCommerce Site”. Notice, that it is not just about the arrangement of the words. The first headline gives out a better call to action.

#7. Learn From Your Own Mistake

The key to a better business is to learn from your own mistake. Every test will give you a different result. There might be strategies, which had earlier proved to bring out successful results. However, that does not mean it will yield the same in your current project. While you follow the above key points to get a head start in running a smarter test, there is always a lot to learn from the failed ones.

Learn your design loopholes and grow better ideas about how to increase your eCommerce sales online with A/B split testing.

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Debarup Mukherjee

Hi friends, This is Debarup Mukherjee, a Digital Marketing Specialist, SEO Consultant & Blogger. I have over 12 years experience in Digital Marketing. I love to write on technology and SEO. I have built many blogs, one of them is Techno World News, specially for Technology & Internet. Hope everyone like and enjoy this blog and get valuable information which you can share with your friends. You can ask me anything on my Twitter, Facebook or Google+ Account

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