Why should businesses consider using A/B tests?
A/B testing is a popular marketing experimentation process where two different versions of the asset are shown to website visitors.
For example, before running an ad campaign to drive potential customers to a product page. Marketers should conduct an A/B test and use the insights to give it the best chance to convert them into paying customers without wasting advertising budget on unprofitable clicks.
The main goal is to understand which version leaves the most significant impact and drives better marketing metrics. You may look at it as a competition.
When running a digital marketing campaign, you cannot expect everything will go smoothly. Therefore, this is where you should focus on A/B testing to fine-tune your campaign.
Conducting A/B testing is not difficult, but marketers need a good strategy before launching the test.
They should begin the process with a hypothesis, determining which web page or marketing asset elements will perform better after completing the test? And why?
Any business that runs digital marketing campaigns should think about using A/B testing. Here are some of the reasons that highlight its importance;
Solve the pain points of your potential customers
The potential customers visit the website or landing page to achieve a goal that they have in mind. They may want to understand more about the product or service or simply doing some research.
Whatever the goal may be, they may encounter some pain points, such as confusing website navigation, hard-to-find CTA buttons, etc.
Failing to help potential customers achieve their goals can lead to a bad user experience and increase friction, affecting the business’s conversion rates.
Marketers should apply A/B testing to reduce the friction of potential customers.
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Make low-risk modifications to your website or landing pages
Every improvement that you make to the website or landing pages can impact the returns generated. It is highly recommended to conduct an A/B test with the two versions to see whether the modification you did delivers positive results?
– Get better ROI from existing traffic
The process of A/B testing can also help you to receive maximum return out of your existing traffic without increasing your marketing budget.
Suppose a slight change in rewriting the website’s product description can get more visitors to fill up the web form.
In that case, you should find out what other elements of your webpage might impact the micro metrics, such as average time spent on the site and bounce rate.
The marketing campaigns that deliver more engagement are the ones that address the pain points of the customers. When you are aware of this, you can align all your campaigns accordingly.
Best practices for A/B testing copy
When you work on A/B testing, it is crucial to adhere to best practices at all times. Here are some methods you will need to follow to receive maximum returns from A/B testing.
– Test which power words effectively drive action
You can use different powerful words on your website or landing page to engage visitors and convert them. This is why you should conduct A/B testing to see which powerful words can effectively improve the overall marketing metrics.
Some words can help you to evoke powerful emotions such as motivation, excitement, and confidence.
– Ensure that the process will have enough time to make it work
You will need to provide sufficient time to gather data instead of rushing through the A/B testing process. The testing campaign should be running for approximately four weeks with an ideal sample size to collect realistic results.
One important thing marketers should take note of while performing the A/B testing, don’t try to change multiple qualities during one A/B test. Else, you won’t understand which elements made a significant difference in your A/B testing data.
A/B test the price of your products and services
Price is one of the most important elements that influence the purchase decisions made by people. While keeping that in mind, you can tweak the pricing of your product and services to do A/B testing. This will help you to figure out the most optimum pricing.
– A/B test your CTA
The call to action of your website or landing page tells the visitors what you want them to do now, and it should be compelling enough for the visitors to take immediate action.
Statistically, making changes to even one word, button color, or text color of the CTAs can impact the conversion rates.
– A/b test the navigation of your website or landing page
If the navigation of your website is complex, you will have a difficult time converting the visitors. This is where you will need to change the overall navigation.
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4. The A/B testing process
To get the most results from A/B testing, you should have a strong understanding of the A/B testing process. Here’s an overview of the process you have to follow.
You need to identify a problem and then create two testing variations of it. Whether it’s improving the text of the CTA button, product information, or replacing the banner image, the changes to make should always be justifiable.
Next, you need to develop testing goals as well. For example, changing the landing page can be measuring the number of conversions you get.
When you have the problem and the testing goals, you can run A/B testing. At the end of A/B testing, you will need to analyze the overall effectiveness of your A/B testing process.
Case Study
Let’s take a look at an eCommerce business, which offers ladies office wear in Singapore. The company takes two instances of the eCommerce website to do A/B testing.
The first instance is where the eCommerce website tests with the Fully Secured SSL Checkout Trust Badge in the sales funnel. This provides the company the chance to experience an increase of sales by 117% compared to the instance where there was no such badge.
Then the company tests another instance, where it introduces a FAQ and a review on the product page. This helps the eCommerce brand to notice an increase in overall sales by 81.5%.
When you compare the results of these A/B testing efforts, you will notice that the first instance can deliver maximum returns.
Conclusion
Now you have a great understanding of what A/B testing is all about. However, while keeping this in mind, you should incorporate it into your digital marketing efforts.
To summarize – A/B testing can assist businesses to maximize their ROI, reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) and grow the number of quality leads and sales closed.
Yet despite these benefits, only 20% of businesses in Singapore are satisfied with their conversion metrics, which suggests that marketers severely neglect the practice of A/B testing.
