When you develop a new product, website, or email campaign that is designed for a large audience, you may take different steps to make it successful. Definitely, you want to find out what is best for your customer and what will make him happy. A/B testing is a secret ingredient or a special flavoring for building a hot product that people love. Let’s take a closer look at how the process works and what you can expect.
The Whole New Era Of User Experience
Today, customer-centered vision is the key to success in any business domain. The real-time user feedback is what really matters when it comes to implementing your CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization) plan. This data can be used to optimize any area of your website based on the behavior of real human beings, your customers. I’ve heard somewhere that the rule number one for A/B testing is to reject everything you THINK you know about your clients and try to learn real customers’ preferences face-to-face to make things work.
A Or B?
The fact is, nothing could be simpler. You just need to compare two versions of a web page (or an e-mail blast, or something else) to get the insight, which one shows better performance among the similar groups of targeted people. The option that shows better conversion rate is just the one you need!
What Do You Get?
According to many case studies and researches, conducted among those who addressed towards this kind of testing and modified their content accordingly, A/B testing has significantly helped to increase conversion rates, lower bounce rates and, as a result, get more sales!
A/B testing helps you to improve your content, constantly checking the potential theories that may work and choosing the most successful one. It will become clear which variant makes your customers spend more time on this or that page, navigate deeper through the website, put a like, comment, sign up for additional information or, ultimately, purchase. Instead of reading in tea leaves and making wild guesses you test your theories and find the winning approach.
Actual Benefits Of A/B Testing
A/B testing is not the only method to figure out the customers’ preferences, however, it has relevant benefits:
– It is not time consuming and expensive. Usually you compare two options that have only slight differences that may incur minimal development costs. In the result, when you get the necessary feedback you just decide on the one that performed better and do not need to make substantial investments in big changes.
– It simply and accurately measures performance differences. The only thing you need is to collect the necessary data and compare the results. Today there are numerous comprehensive solutions like Google Analytics which suits any platform or Amasty A/B testing created specifically for one of the most popular CMS – Magento. These solutions offer you accurate, informative statistical reports, and many other options for running successful A/B tests.
– It works with real people. When you launch a new product or implement some changes, you never know how it will work for public. A/B testing is targeted for real customers, so you will better understand and see their reaction towards your innovations and will manage to give them exactly what they need.
– It easily resolves the doubts. If you can’t decide which strategy to choose or what content will work best, you can try both variants simultaneously to find out the one that will show better performance.
Mind The Hidden Pitfalls
A/B testing is a very effective tool that can contribute greatly to the success of your business, but you should take into account that it is not good for all the situations. Let me remind you of three simple parameters that should be observed if you want to use A/B tests in your practice:
– You should set ONE clear goal at a time.
– You should be able to easily measure the outcome, otherwise you won’t be able to choose the best variant.
– Your project should be complete, or almost complete, so that one of the tested options could be the final version that you use.
Final Words
If used right, A/B testing can help you to improve your business and increase its profitability. Make more from the analytical data that you get every day and store it on the shelf, instead of using it. Even small changes in conversion rates of your website can bring positive and significant results in lead generation and sales. Besides, today you do not need to go deeper into all the technical details, because many companies offer you ready-to-use modules that will help you conduct successful A/B tests for a specific project. It’s high time to find yours!
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