A Beginner's Guide to A/B Testing
What is A/B Testing?
A/B Testing is a way to find out how different versions of the same website are doing on the internet. You simply make two slightly different designs for the same website and see which one performs better when it comes to generating leads and conversions. It is sort of a Test drive for your website. To know which version is doing better than the other. Both versions are experimented on and put to a Test. The version that generates more traffic and generally does better than the other, is the one that is selected and used.
How Does it Work?
It can be a simple CTA button or an "add to cart" option. The variations of this simple button on your website can be numerous. Give it a green background in one version and a red background in another and see which one fairs well. After the trial period, you can see which one performed better with the audience and choose that one as the official color.
Usually, the decision is based on things like conversion rates, CTA, sales, click through rate, bounce rate, etc. there are many things that are included in an A/B Test, which includes pricing, images, layout, style, design, headlines, promotions and much more.
When everything is done, you choose the version with the best results. This, however, is the simplified version of A/B Testing. If you feel like you need more advanced results, you can try the next level of A/B Testing known as Multivariate Testing.
Multivariate Testing
Multivariate Testing is more complex than A/B Testing, but the process is somewhat similar to the standard A/B Testing. The only difference between the two is that there are more variables that determine the results. Instead of just two different versions of the same website, you try out many different versions and decide which one is better.
The disadvantage of Multivariate Testing is that it becomes increasingly more complex and requires more time for Testing. However, on the plus side, you gather some really illuminating data about the performance of your website.
A/B Testing is usually done for landing pages so make sure that all versions of your landing pages are fully optimized. Make sure your URL is SEO friendly, and the titles and headings are informative, short, yet appealing. Try to bold out the keyword at least once in the body text and add images that have descriptive text. Try adding external links to other websites.
The Next Steps
Once you are done with the first version of your website, launch it and wait for results. See how it does online and wait for it to be indexed by search engines. Once it is indexed, you will have enough traffic to do an A/B Test. Once the second version of the website is launched, make sure it is not indexed by the search engines as they will classify it as "duplicate content" and that is not what you want.
To make sure the B version doesn't get indexed, you can apply a Meta tag or apply a canonical reference to the first version. This will automatically tell the search engines that the first landing page is the original version.
You can Test different versions of your homepages with tools like KISSmetrics and Google Website Optimizer. Once you have done all of this, all you have to do is waiting and see which variant of your landing page is the most popular among the users.
A/B Testing is a way to find out how different versions of the same website are doing on the internet. You simply make two slightly different designs for the same website and see which one performs better when it comes to generating leads and conversions. It is sort of a Test drive for your website. To know which version is doing better than the other. Both versions are experimented on and put to a Test. The version that generates more traffic and generally does better than the other, is the one that is selected and used.
How Does it Work?
It can be a simple CTA button or an "add to cart" option. The variations of this simple button on your website can be numerous. Give it a green background in one version and a red background in another and see which one fairs well. After the trial period, you can see which one performed better with the audience and choose that one as the official color.
Usually, the decision is based on things like conversion rates, CTA, sales, click through rate, bounce rate, etc. there are many things that are included in an A/B Test, which includes pricing, images, layout, style, design, headlines, promotions and much more.
When everything is done, you choose the version with the best results. This, however, is the simplified version of A/B Testing. If you feel like you need more advanced results, you can try the next level of A/B Testing known as Multivariate Testing.
Multivariate Testing
Multivariate Testing is more complex than A/B Testing, but the process is somewhat similar to the standard A/B Testing. The only difference between the two is that there are more variables that determine the results. Instead of just two different versions of the same website, you try out many different versions and decide which one is better.
The disadvantage of Multivariate Testing is that it becomes increasingly more complex and requires more time for Testing. However, on the plus side, you gather some really illuminating data about the performance of your website.
A/B Testing is usually done for landing pages so make sure that all versions of your landing pages are fully optimized. Make sure your URL is SEO friendly, and the titles and headings are informative, short, yet appealing. Try to bold out the keyword at least once in the body text and add images that have descriptive text. Try adding external links to other websites.
The Next Steps
Once you are done with the first version of your website, launch it and wait for results. See how it does online and wait for it to be indexed by search engines. Once it is indexed, you will have enough traffic to do an A/B Test. Once the second version of the website is launched, make sure it is not indexed by the search engines as they will classify it as "duplicate content" and that is not what you want.
To make sure the B version doesn't get indexed, you can apply a Meta tag or apply a canonical reference to the first version. This will automatically tell the search engines that the first landing page is the original version.
You can Test different versions of your homepages with tools like KISSmetrics and Google Website Optimizer. Once you have done all of this, all you have to do is waiting and see which variant of your landing page is the most popular among the users.
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JohnMcCabe -
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