With today’s competitive marketplace, it’s important for internet companies to hone their edge when it comes to consumer interaction. This may be easier said than done as digital marketing is not an exact science, but a combination of technology, design, human psychology, and more. With so many variables, it’s difficult to reliably answer any questions that may arise during a new marketing initiative. One way to solve this is with the use of split testing or A/B testing. This allows a more scientific approach to marketing and presents a pathway to improved sales.
What is Split Testing?
Split testing is simply creating two design variations, delivering those variations equally among your audience, and recording the results. Once the better performing variation has been identified, take the information and reinforce a proper marketing strategy. Split testing can be applied to almost anything from alternate email content, a different homepage design, or as simple as differing button colors. The idea is to keep testing and improving, honing your marketing strategy down to a razors edge. With that said, you may be asking if split testing is completely necessary. I believe a business can be successful without it, but the more you can learn about your audience, the more targeted your efforts. The following shows just a few benefits one may see by running consistent split testing over time and improving the overall user experience.
Benefits of Split Testing
Setting up split testing may cost additional time and/or money, but here are a few things one may realize.
Better User Engagement
Making improvements to better serve your potential customers is paramount because it encourages user engagement. For example, let’s say Dave has been running an online blog business for years and has done things to his own liking. After a few rounds of split testing, Dave finds that his users respond better to more visually rich content. He makes a few improvements to his homepage content and sees user engagement improve drastically. It’s a simple strategy really, give your visitors what they want and they will become customers.
Reduced Bounce Rates
A website’s bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page of your website. This can be discouraging as one might be left wondering why visitors don’t find more value from the site. split testing is an effective way to find out what your audience wants and present it to them, drastically reducing the bounce rate and improving user engagement at the same time!
Targeted Sales
To stay in business, a company needs to narrow down to what sells and repeat. What’s great about split testing is that over time, one can get a good sense of what their customers respond to. For instance, let’s say after months of testing numerous approaches, you’ve found that your customers respond best to big orange buttons, content rich imagery/videos, sans-serif fonts with larger line spacing, an open clean design, and calming blue and green colors. Using this type of data to your advantage will keep you in business while others unknowingly turn visitors away.
Improved Risk Management
When testing a new approach in any business, it’s essential to manage risk. Let’s say you’ve been doing well with your current homepage design for years and it converts visitors consistently. You’re afraid to change anything, but feel there is opportunity to create something even better. One could create a new homepage, flip the switch, and see what happens, but that could come at a huge loss to the company if it doesn’t go well. To manage this scenario better, one could split test the current and new website design to see how they compare. Completely switching to the new design makes more sense once proven by it’s customer base.
Improved Incentives
What do your customers respond to? Do sales increase when giving a limited time discount? Are they more willing to purchase “add on” products for less? How about free shipping? When it comes to giving the customer an incentive to buy, there are many different scenarios to try. With further knowledge about what really motivates your customers to purchase, you can structure the perfect sales funnel.
Better Conversion Rates
The goal of an online business is to convert visitors into customers. Without customers, the business will eventually fail, so it’s imperative to retain a constant flow of new clientele. By running a number of split tests and really narrowing down to what your visitors respond to best, you’ll be sure to increase sales and convert visitors into happy customers.
Measure and Take Action
Split testing alone will not lead to better conversion rates if you don’t take action on the results. Every time you run a test, be sure to keep track of the results, determine what works best, and move forward with measurable changes. Digital marketing may not be an exact science, but by approaching it with a scientific mindset, one can find any number of ways to make measurable improvements towards the bottom line.
