For marketers wanting to discover how their business’ audience responds to certain marketing materials, A/B testing is an effective method to incorporate into a comprehensive business strategy. Not only will A/B testing ensure that your conversion rates improve, but it will also allow you to gain deeper insights into what your audience want to see, allowing you to effectively plan future marketing activity.
What is A/B testing?
It can be tricky to determine how responsive an audience may be to a particular design, such as a call to action, image or heading, etc. It is here that A/B testing can be used to your advantage, splitting your audience in half and subsequently directing half to your first option (A) and the other half to your second option (B).
A simple example of this would be testing the impact of a particular call to action on click-throughs to your site. While your CTA on option A may say ‘read more’, the CTA on option B, say ‘discover more’; in assessing how many click-throughs that each CTA attracted you can determine which option your audience responds to the most and use this knowledge to inform your marketing strategy. Of course, this may not be the end of you’re A/B testing; after establishing which CTA copy works, you may also want to test the colour of your CTA, the design, its position on the page, etc.
Effective A/B testing
Here are some guidelines that we here at Entyce follow when A/B testing for clients:
> Understand what you are looking to achieve through A/B testing (higher conversion rate, lower bounce rate, etc).
> Ensure your audience is split randomly.
> Run your tests simultaneously (unless testing the appropriate time to send a marketing material).
> Only test one element at a time, the process will become much more complicated to analyse and reach definitive results if you test multiple elements at once.
> Don’t rush A/B testing, ensure you leave enough time to adequately test and analyse each separate element.
> Audiences change and marketing methods develop, don’t rely on one A/B test to determine all future marketing, regularly A/B test audiences.
Whilst knowledge of your industry and expert opinion from marketers will go a long way, A/B testing will ensure that your business’ target audience is as receptive to your efforts as possible.
Do you have a marketing project you’d like to discuss? Contact our team today.