Overview of A/B Testing

Scenario 1: A new design/creative element that is catchier has been proposed or finalized for your site or page. But seeing the search rank for your site in the major search engines, there is a fear of losing that position to your competitors.

Scenario 2: In your website there are a lot of pages which were expected to produce good conversions, but haven’t met your expectations.

These are two scenarios where an A/B split testing could be employed to improve the conversions or finalize on the new design/creative and the list may go on.

With an ever increasing number of businesses on the web, there is also a need to be able to reap positive results out of it. To be able to draw a visitor’s attention, site design plays a great role. Implementing changes without a rational approach may turn out to be a damaging step. You make some changes and later wonder what change was it that finally gave you more profitable visitors. Done the right way, you will successfully be able to analyze what lured visitors to your site and led to a greater conversion ratio.
The bottom-line is that the objective of any website, be it for lead generation, brand recognition, online sales, etc can be reached by the method of A/B testing.

So what is A/B testing?

A/B testing a web page is a scientific way of reaching at your goal through optimizations. It is one of the simplest and easiest forms of testing. It aims at testing two alternatives at the same time by displaying them to two different visitor groups, all in real time. It’s basically a relative term where item ‘A’ is tested against item ‘B’. The application of this concept has been there for a long time preceding Internet, though of late it’s gaining popularity among the website owners and web marketers.

The concept of A/B split testing is essentially to determine which elements of a web page help in the better performance of the web page and which do not. These elements may include Page header, Creatives, Fonts, Layout, Bullet list or Number list, Button, etc. The possibilities are numerous.

A/B testing is a process of continuous or incremental improvements. With marginal changes in the page applied one after another, the page can be improved drastically with all the necessary changes which until before the test were doubtful.

Why A/B test?

If Web Analytics is working for you then you can’t let your eye off A/B testing. When every conclusion is met after a detailed analysis, then you should also probably do the optimization work after proper A/B testing on the site. Blindly going ahead with as crucial a step as a change in web page, would only lead to a lot of questions. Was it the leader board that caught the attention or was it the skyscraper? Did the text hyperlink get clicked more or the button? Should the bold headline at the top of the page be in red color or black color? Will a longer headline be better than a shorter headline? Answers to all such questions related your site will tend to remain a mystery unless there is a proper set up to test the effect of these changes. The answer to that – A/B testing.

How to do it?

A/B testing has proven its worth. To start with it, there are tools or service provided by companies which help in managing such tests.

Discover more about A/B Testing Methodology and A/B Testing Tools.

To find out more or to outsource your Web Analytics services to us, contact Outsource2india now and we will help you pick the right tool.