There’s a lot of trial and error involved in digital marketing because not every idea is a good idea. Sometimes a website or campaign needs a small adjustment and other times you need to come up with a whole new approach. Its time consuming and can often be costly too.
Luckily there is an easy way for you to find out what works and what doesn’t. It’s called A/B Testing.
What Exactly Is A/B Testing?
A/B testing (also known as split testing) is the process of comparing two variants (A and B) of the same thing. This could be two versions of a page on a website, an email, or other marketing material with just one varying component.
Here’s an example…
If you’re A/B testing the headline on a blog post, you would create two versions of the same post. The only difference would be the headline. After you prepare both versions, you present them to half the people who visit your blog.
The test will tell you which version performed well with your audience based on specific data, like engagement and the time spent on the page. By measuring each group’s response to variant A and variant B, you can determine which variant is more effective.
Why A/B Testing Is Important
Creating a marketing campaign or website is just the first step in digital marketing. Once you have your campaign in place you’ll want to know if it’s effective. A/B testing lets you know which headlines, words, phrases, images, videos, etc work best.
The resulting data allows you to make informed changes to your strategy and content. And even the smallest changes can have an impact on conversion rates. As such, AB testing can consistently be used to improve any given user experience, which in turn will improve specific goals over time.
Reasons To Use A/B Testing
- High Quality Content
While you are in the process of coming up with different ideas for A/B testing, you have to evaluate every aspect of the content you wish to test. This means creating lists of potential improvements and changes. As a result, the final version of your content will be of extremely high quality.
- Reduced Bounce Rates
Creating pages for a website isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time and effort. So it can be disappointing when visitors leave or “bounce” without spending too much time exploring your content or looking at other pages. By using A/B testing you can optimize your website’s fonts, headlines or whatever else you can think of. With A/B testing you can find the perfect combination of elements to keep visitors on your site for longer.
- Boost Conversion Rates
A/B testing is an effective tool to help you create content that converts visitors into buyers. By taking the time to carefully create two versions of your campaign, it’ll be easy to see what works and what doesn’t. Testing two versions will take a little longer but it will definitely help you convert more leads into happy customers.
- Multi-functional Testing
It’s not easy to figure out what visitors to your website will like and dislike. That’s essentially what makes A/B testing so important. A/B testing is multi-function so you can test just about anything. You can use it to test images, headlines, or any marketing and advertising campaign. And it’s often the tiniest tweak that makes all the difference when figuring out what engages and converts visitors.
- Easy Analysis
A/B testing is a simple process and the best part is that it’s easy to analyze the results. When combing through the data from an A/B test, you can determine what works and what doesn’t is based on real, factual metrics (time spent on the page, conversion rates, etc).
Here’s an example: If you create two blog posts with two different headlines, the winning headline is one that gets the most clicks (or visitors).
- Reduced Costs
Having to make major changes to your website can be very costly. With the help of A/B testing you can examine the behavior of visitors and customers on your site before committing to any major decisions. This will help to increase your chances of success. A/B testing also helps you to avoid unnecessary risks by allowing you to distribute your resources for maximum effect and efficiency.
