When business owners start a website, they might not be aware of all the details that will affect its conversion potential. Covering all the bases that make a conversion-friendly website is an important turn on the road to success of every new business.
In line with that, the report on digital marketing published by Hubspot claims that only about 22% of companies express satisfaction with their conversion rates.
In order to improve the usability of your website and make it work for your business, you should conduct A/B testing. Here are some basic actions you should take beforehand.
Set the goal of A/B testing
The concept of A/B testing always includes two different versions of the same product. Technopedia defines A/B testing in the following way:
An online marketing tactic where different versions of a product are used to see which one users or consumers prefer. With online products, such as a webpage, email campaign or advertisement, A/B testing can be carried out with relative ease and yield quick results due to the instant and detailed analytics that testers receive.
Therefore, the first thing to do is to set the goal of the testing procedure. A rule of thumb here is to test feature by feature, bit by bit. Only such an approach will ensure proper reliable feedback from your test groups. Otherwise, you won’t be able to identify the questionable elements of the website.
Conducting comprehensive A/B testing should be done only when you’re preparing to launch a website from scratch. In that case, you’re interested in the overall impact your website has on the visitors and their user experience.
In all other cases, test each website feature separately.
What to test first?
Before you delve into A/B testing, it’s important to define what features to test first.
When it comes to the A/B testing of an SMB-website, the visitors should be randomly redirected to two different versions (A and B option) of the same website. However, each user will see and use only one version. When the testing is over, you’ll opt for the version that yields a higher conversion rate.
The following features are most commonly tested during the A/B testing stage:
Headline
This is the dominant visual feature of every page on your website. It will either grasp your visitors’ attention or turn out to be bleak. Brainstorm several ideas for the headline and offer the two most striking ones.
Images
Since most visitors coming to your website won’t possess an abundance of attention, make sure to choose proper images for your web pages. Check out how the target audience reacts to different combinations of pictures.
Copy
The text on the webpage that’s supposed to nudge your visitors into becoming your customers, aka the copy, should be written in several different versions. Learn more about writing an alluring copy in a post published by Marketing Donut.
CTA features
Every website – especially the commercial ones – needs to contain various calls to actions. They can range from inviting visitors to subscribe to the website to offering them some discounts and special deals. If you think that those CTA-features don’t inspire your visitors to become more engaged, test feature by feature and increase the conversion rate.
Choose the right tools
When you want to make your website stand out from the crowd, it’s important to use the right tool for data analysis. Although their number is growing as we speak, here’re a few solutions you might consider trying it out:
Unbounce
Unbounce will help you conduct an A/B test that should help you increase the number of leads. What’s extremely practical here is the option to simply drag and drop the element you want to replace on your website. As such, it’s a great pick for every average Internet user.
Also, this software can be used for email marketing campaigns and marketing automation, as well.
There’s a monthly subscription fee for this tool and it starts from $79/month.
Google Optimize
A great option for every new website owner, Google Optimize will provide you with all the elements you need to perform A/B testing and analyze its results.
Apart from a regular comparison of two website variations, you can also perform multivariate and redirect tests with this tool.
Also, Google Optimize is free of charge, which is an important perk for a new business owner.
Optimizely
If you want to get deeper into A/B testing, you should try Optimizely.
Apart from ordinary testing, you can test your smartphone app here, as well. It’s a great option for website owners who find mobile users an important share of their target audience. For instance, the owners of e-stores and similar online hubs will benefit from this feature.
Also, you’ll get a simple code that needs to be inserted into your HTML. It will help you apply the changes you decide to make after the testing to your website.
Identify your visitors’ demands
Logically, the key role of your website is to satisfy your customers’ needs. Therefore, you should identify their demands prior to launching an A/B test. This option will help you find out what features of your website don’t provide enough value for its visitors.
The most efficient way to gather these data is to conduct a qualitative analysis among your visitors and see what elements of the website they don’t completely comprehend.
Apart from that, this analysis will resolve some doubts you may have about the functionality of various parts of your website.
On the one hand, you can rely on the heat maps of your website, which will highlight the behavior of your visitors on the website. The “hottest” areas, i.e. the red ones will indicate what elements are frequently used, meaning that visitors find them practical.
As opposed to them, those yellow and white ones will tell you what elements lack functionality. You can use the heat-map tools provided by LuckyOrange to get reliable data.
Further, you can conduct a quantitative analysis by asking your visitors directly. For instance, you’ve decided to start a blog section in addition to the existing website and you want to know what your customers think about that move. The procedure is pretty straightforward: make a list of questions you want to ask them, get a survey tool, create a survey and add it to your website.
When you get enough samples, analyze them and see how the audience has reacted to your new feature.
This example with a blog section is only that – an example. You can use the quantitative analysis to obtain any data you need before you launch A/B testing.
Conclusion
Your business website can popularize your entire venture and ensure steady income by converting a larger number of visitors into customers. In order to make your website work for you, it’s crucial to define the function of every single element you add to it. This is where A/B testing comes on stage. It will help you enrich the website with vital elements, provide a special value for its visitors and boost your revenues through higher conversion rates.
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