Wakefly BlogHow A/B Testing Can Boost Your Conversions

Conversions are the core of every great marketing strategy, and they’ll ultimately determine the revenue potential and growth rate of your business. A/B testing is a great way to make sure your conversion points are strong, thus enhancing the effectiveness of your website design.

A/B testing also referred to as split testing, is the process of changing one element on a web page to make it more user-friendly and increase conversions. Once the test is set up, and run, compare the results of the two different versions to determine which is receiving more hits, leads, and conversions.

In doing so, you can identify the core factors that are leading to success, enabling you to strategically approach website design in a way that maximizes conversions.

Initial Considerations

Virtually all aspects of your website can be tested to determine what’s working and what isn’t. You can test the effectiveness of product locations, calls to action, fonts, color schemes, photos, testimonials, links, and more. This will help you design a website that is perfectly optimized to consumer preferences, thus cultivating a passive marketing strategy that will generate boundless leads and conversions over the years.

The Statistical Significance of A/B Testing

For A/B testing to be effective, you need to run multiple trials and compare the results of each. The conversion rate of a webpage is susceptible to countless variables, and these variables make it difficult to gauge whether one webpage is actually performing better than another webpage.

If, after only one trial, one webpage appears to be performing better than the other, it could simply be a matter of chance. If, after several trials, that same webpage has shown to repeatedly perform better, then this is a strong indication that it possesses a superior design scheme.

It’s also important to factor in statistical significance. Since so many variables are involved, your results will never be 100 percent accurate. According to Cennydd.com, it’s commonly accepted that such experiments have a margin of error of 5 percent in either direction. Should one webpage be performing up to 5 percent better, the results are statistically insignificant, as the variables could have skewed the results of the test.

A/B Testing Best Practices

In order to gain the most accurate results from your A/B testing, you need to approach the tests in a methodical way. Here are some of the most important practices to consider:

• Focus on Navigation: The average attention span of a human being is now at an all-time low. If your webpage design is confusing or difficult to navigate, your audience will quickly lose patience and interest and leave your site. Experiment with different layouts to help determine which design scheme is the easiest to navigate for visitors.
• Appeal to Your Audience: To gain conversions, you need to appeal to the hearts and minds of your audiences. Consider the core demographics that visit your site. What are their interests, needs, and goals? By catering to the emotions and interests of your audience, you can boost conversions and enhance your ROI.
• A/B Test Your Funnel from Top to Bottom: Your landing page serves as the top of the funnel, generating the greatest amount of traffic to your site. Determine which pages are performing the best and A/B test them in order of most traffic to the least traffic. This will help you to determine the underlying factors that are resulting in fewer page views for your slower webpages.
• Experiment with Layouts and Templates: People are largely visual learners, and aesthetics are key to captivating an audience. A/B test a variety of templates, styles, and layouts to see which is most visually appealing in the eyes of your visitors.
• Test your Headlines: Headlines are what stand out to a visitor immediately and entice them to explore your site further. The word choice and phrasing of a headline is critical to generating conversions, and you should test multiple versions of the same headline against one another to see which is best received by your viewers.

A/B testing is a tremendously useful strategy to increase conversions and design a more effective website. It allows you to get down to the nitty-gritty and determine the styles, phrases, layouts, and calls to action that are most effective among your audience, so you can optimize every aspect of your website and maximize your returns.

Just keep in mind, SEO needs to remain at the heart of your strategy, as it can boost your search engine ranking, draw in more traffic, and increase your potential for conversions. Also, factor in the statistical significance of your findings, and run each test multiple times to compare results.

Looking for help setting up your first A/B test? Don’t hesitate to reach out! We have conducted hundreds of successful A/B tests, and know what it takes to turn your website into a lead generating machine!