In marketing and web development, split testing is a web design experimental approach aiming to find web page changes that maximize outcomes. You basically compare versions of your website pages; for example, you can compare two versions of your web pages or website like comparing of versions A and B such as A being the live version and B being a modification of that version. Usually, websites that are great candidates for testing A/B are e-commerce websites. Testing and making modifications based on your results will help increase your sales.
This process of alternating 2 or more website design alterations to test interactions between users is called split testing. Landing pages and other web pages with goals that are specific benefit from considerations of design that force users to take actions which are appropriate. Split tests let designers utilize metrics that are relevant.
Most companies use the approach of designed experiments to make decisions about marketing. This is a practice that is increasingly common as the expertise and tools grow in these areas. There are a few case studies that used split testing, revealing that testing is a practice that is getting more and more popular with medium and small sized businesses. For instance, the pioneer of split testing use in the space of ecommerce was done by Amazon.com. Here are 6 awesome tips for you to help you with split testing.
1. Testing Elements
When split testing, the various elements that need to be tested include the colors, images, layouts and copy test. You will see which results are generated by which elements. Keep in the elements that reveal good results and tweak or make significant improvements on those that do not.
2. Adjust Text
In split testing, adjusting images and text content tends to create maximum audience impact. Text shortening such as only including the brand or product gist seems to increase the engagement of the audience and stir the motivation for making a purchase.
3. Adjust Images
In the same way, test your images to find which product photos on the landing pages increased visitors click through and if it increased the checkout rate. Compare these results to those of pages with no photos of the products.
4. Don’t Split Test Everything
When it comes to split testing, there is no need to prioritize navigation tools design as well as menu bar designing. As long as these are found in all the correct places, the style doesn’t matter usually.
5. Adjust Color
Even if many webmasters assume that color adjustments are not a priority, these are actually quite significant. This is due to the fact that visuals tend to lure guests into actions. Websites with blue backgrounds that are not quite noticeable are not able to get as much attention as much as bright colors can such as orange.
6. Test All the Landing Pages that Matter
To do this open your browser on the Web and navigate to the home page of Google. Create a new general account or sign in to your Google webmasters tool account. Navigate to the Website Optimizer of Google. In the window where it says Getting Started, create a new experiment and from the 2 choices listed for the experiments, click A/B Experiment and click the button “create.” In the provided field, enter the name of the Experiment and add the original URL page you want to test and make sure that it is not log-in or password protected but rather, is quite accessible to Google. Name as many landing pages you want to test in the additional fields below.
Split testing is a great method to find out what modifications you need to do on your website to increase your sales. Follow these tips and start split testing so that you can grow your business.