Marketers who help businesses grow their revenue know the true importance of A/B testing. There’re some reasons for that.

It weeds out the ineffective. It helps figure out what makes your customers tick. It increases your conversions.

Simply put, it works.

Unfortunately, our industry is swarmed with marketers who guarantee only rankings and clicks – things that don’t matter much in today’s world. For them, A/B tests have never held much significance.

This post is designed to take you through what exactly A/B testing is, what metrics you should work on, the guidelines that’ll help you get the best from your tests and the tools you may need.

A/B testing simplified, for you  

A/B testing is a smart, cost-effective method of determining what works better for your business. Imagine you’re not quite sure about a certain element in your landing page. You’ve two options, but you can’t decide which one’s best. By using A/B testing you can experiment both options simultaneously to measure which one gets better response rate.

It’s really that simple!

But remember: what works for one business may not be the best option for another. Which means A/B testing is all about getting a fair idea of what YOUR customers find compelling so you can become more likeable and generate more leads.

What variables to test

It all actually boils down to your business objectives. If your objective is to increase your conversions, you may test:

• Headlines
• Display of live chat
• Number of pricing options
• Placement/size/copy/color of call to action buttons
• Number of form fields
• Whether to take credit card details upfront
• Display of trust symbols

Guidelines

Here’re some A/B testing best practice tips (or rather do’s and don’ts) to prevent you from doing blunders so you can better optimize your site and get a competitive advantage:

• It’s an easy mistake: not testing simultaneously. By testing two elements separately, you may end up decreasing your conversion rate.
• Avoid getting to conclusions too early so you can get better results. You may use the Visual Website Optimizer Calculator to decide the duration of your tests.
• Avoid clashing your personal choices with the data, because the former won’t secure you results. Even if the results are shocking, let them be – because your users find it compelling.
• Test only with new visitors as surprising loyal visitors is never a sound idea.
• Don’t keep only one metric in mind. And test for all the metrics that matter.
• Don’t stop A/B testing, just as you don’t stop marketing. The best way to go about it is by thinking that your site is far from perfect, always.
• Use tools such as Google Analytics Content Experiments and Visual Website Optimizer to make your life easier with A/B testing.

Want ResultFirst to do A/B testing for you? We’d be happy to help.