Once you’ve got your website up and running, with a steady flow of traffic, you might wonder how you can make it even better. Improving the user experience and, perhaps most importantly, your conversion rates, doesn’t have to be complicated.
The most common method for determining the best presentation of your site or product is called A/B testing. This is simply presenting two (or more) separate options to distinct groups of visitors and seeing which presentation performs better. There are a lot of different aspects of your website or product that you can apply A/B testing to, and some very helpful software programs out there to streamline the process.
The “What”
Now that you know the bones of what A/B testing is, you’re probably wondering what exactly you can use it for. There are a lot of things you can test, but the top two uses for A/B testing are to evaluate:
1. Style and design – Do customers prefer a blue website or a red one? Do they respond surprisingly favorably or negatively to a larger font size? What is the most comfortable menu layout for all of the different parts of your website? Where should the buttons go on your brand new app? These are a few of the stylistic and design questions that A/B testing is used to answer.
2. Communication style – Do you have a better conversion rate when you communicate directly and matter-of-factly to your customers or does sweet-talking do the trick? Do more customers respond when you send mailers in the mornings or in the evenings? A/B testing can help you figure out how to best communicate with your audience.
The “How”
You’ve got your mailers, your landing pages, and your site design ideas ready to test, but what is the best way to distribute them and measure the results? Furthermore, what do you do with all of the results when you do get them? Luckily there are many options when it comes to implementing A/B testing. Here are a few of your choices:
1. Google Analytics – Google Analytics offers a service called “Content Experiments” It’s not the simplest system out there, but it is absolutely free. If you have some familiarity with data analysis and are looking to keep costs as minimal as possible, Content Experiments is a good choice.
2. Optimizely – For a low monthly cost, Optimizely makes single-variable and multiple-variable testing simple. The program makes editing your site easy and allows you to measure a variety of effects including clicks, conversions, sign ups and more. Optimizely is available for $17/month with a 30 day free trial.
3. Visual Website Optimizer – VWO allows you to create multiple versions of your site or landing page visually, without needing to touch the HTML. It allows for multivariate testing and offers some neat extra features including usability testing. The interface is very user friendly and for the $49/month fee you get a good variety of tools and straightforward data analysis.
4. Unbounce – This service’s focus is extremely narrow, as in it can only help you with landing pages. What it lacks in breadth it makes up for in depth though. Unbounce makes it incredibly simple to test multiple landing pages and get fast and clear analysis. Its $49/month price tag might seem steep, but if you get steady well-converting traffic as a result of more effective landing pages.
Implementing A/B testing in your business can be as simple or as complicated as you are prepared to make it. If you just want clear and simple answers on what customers like, the programs above are a good place to start. The results may end up surprising you and you’ll get an interesting glimpse into your customers’ psychology as well as a good chance of improving your ROI.
What tools do you use for A/B testing?
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