Web Page Conversion
A/B Testing – Data Makes The Call!
“In God we trust. All others bring data.” This is a quote often credited to W. Edward Deming but I have found no data to indicate that he is the originator of this. It is more likely to have come from the book “The Elements of Statistical Learning”.
The point is that there are modern website development tools that can help us to improve the web page conversion performance of our website where data is the driving force for any modifications.
A/B testing was once a classic direct mail tactic. However, A/B testing is now firmly rooted in interactive space to test variation related to online ads, e-mail campaigns and landing pages or even entire websites. A/B testing is a fundamental tool to help us improve web page conversion.
Over the past few years A/B testing has become a high-stakes secret weapon of web development and web page conversion.
What is A/B Testing?
When you are interested in making a change to improve the web page conversion rate of any of your website pages you may proceed with some uncertainty. This is natural. However, you have to conduct experiments to determine if your web page conversion is as effective as it could be. Do you run experiments? There is risk to this. You could make things worse or some other factor may skew the results.
A modern A/B test is a way to “focus-group” test in real time. Without being told, a fraction of the visitors to your website page are diverted to a different version of the page and the web page conversion performance is compared against the visitors that are presented the standard page. If the new version is superior – creates longer visits, more purchases, more sign-ups – it will displace the original. If it is inferior then it will simply be phased out without most visitors ever seeing it.
An A/B test allows seemingly subjective questions of design – color, layout, image selection, call-to-action – to become incontrovertible matters of data-driven social science.
A/B Testing = Competition Beating Activity
If you have traffic reaching your site and something to offer. Then A/B testing can be a game changer. Here are some clear advantages:
- It can eliminate time-wasting meetings trying to decide what is best. Let the data speak! Don’t struggle trying to figure out the best phrasing for an important headline – run all the proposed headlines and let the A/B testing decide.
- It can help you to decide on which are the best improvements.
- It helps you to make decisions with confidence. You know, with data, what works and what doesn’t.
A/B Testing – Some Cautions
One could consider this a caution or a weakness but it is a bit philosophical. The issue is that often with A/B testing we do not get to understand the “why”. We know what works and what doesn’t but we do not know why. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. If you can improve your web page conversion then you can worry about the “why” later.
Another caution is that an A/B tester tests only the little things that affect web page conversion. Small changes are perfect for A/B testing. However, I refer to this a trying to find the local maximum (remember your Calculus I). Once you conduct an A/B experiment and it is worse (perhaps just by a little) then you turn back. However, do you have the nerve to make a big change and find the global maximum? Small A/B testing experiments may protect you from a major negative change but you need to also consider how costly it may be for you if you never find the most optimized version.
Web Page Conversion – A/B In Summary
We offer A/B testing design and development. We can help you to have a more productive website. We can study individual pages that are associated with specific offers and help to improve the web page conversion of that page. If you would like to take the next step and learn more about how A/B testing can help your website to perform better then we encourage you to take our online survey. Simply answering the questions will provide you with some great insights into how A/B testing can help you improve the web page conversion rate of your website pages.
What’s The Next Step – A Free A/B Test Consultation
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