Take the guesswork out of your web marketing with A/B Testing

In creating a web presence, there are a lot of different ways to go in terms of layout, text, images, colors, offers and so on. So how do you know which direction will help you achieve your goals? AB Testing allows you to test two variations of a web page or email blast in order to determine which is more successful. (Think of it like bracketing for the NCAA finals.) For example, does an orange “buy now” button work better than a green one? Does a subject line with a freebie offer work better than one with a discount offer? Is it more effective to place the navigation bar at the top or on the left? These may seem like trivial differences. However, once your AB Testing results come in, you’ll discover they’re huge.

For example, a company tested how consumers would react to changing their usual 15% discount offer to just 7% off. Surprisingly, sales increased. It seems that people assumed the price must already be the bare-bones lowest available if the company is only offering 7% off.

Once both versions of the web page are created, you divide the traffic based on a defined proportion, such as 50/50 or 80/20 – for a short period of time – depending on your daily volume of traffic. To test an email blast, send out the alternate version to a subset of your email list. AB Testing should be an ongoing process that will allow you to incrementally optimize your site over the next few months or even the next year. In other words…Always Be Testing.