You’re probably heard about the term – A/B testing.
You’ve heard about the simplest instances of A/B testing like changing calls to action and button colors. But most ecommerce businesses don’t have the idea on how to do it effectively.
This is unfortunate, given that, when done nicely, A/B testing – or split testing – is one of the most dominant ways to improve some of the most significant metrics in your business.
That’s what this article is all about. We’re going to give you a detailed understanding of A/B testing, why you should do it, some examples, what you can test with it, when to utilize it, and much more.
This is your detailed roadmap to A/B testing.
What Is A/B Testing?
It’s a method of figuring out which design, functionality or content is more successful with your site visitors. It enables you to test a variation of your page that may influence your consumer’s behavior.
For instance, it can include:
- Testing two diverse content layouts for the same product to see which layout drives more sales.
- Or different product taxonomies for your site to see which one makes it almost effortless for customers to buy from you.
But here’s the thing…
A/B testing isn’t a one-time deal. It’s not one and done, similar to a college basketball player going expert.
Effective A/B testing ideally includes more than one testing improvement until you get the most ideal version.
It’s an iterative process with each test building upon the results of the past tests.
When A/B testing is done reliably and with focus, it enables you to incrementally improve your overall website design to better align with your business goals and consumer behavior.
When you start, you may not see massive gains; however, when you think back after several months, you’ll be stunned at the overall improvements.
Why Should You Do A/B Testing?
As an ecommerce store owner, you have many tasks on your plate.
- Listing products.
- Responding to customer inquiries.
- Optimizing products for SEO.
- And a thousand more.
Where Do You Use A/B Testing?
A/B testing is about removing consumer pain points. Whenever you can remove friction from the shopping procedure, it altogether increases the chances of conversions. Once more, this is where Amazon stands out.
They’ve done everything possible to expel general online shopping hassles for example:
- Comparing similar products, or those that were bought alongside the currently viewed product.
- Filtering to find a particular product that matches your requirements.
- Decide the overall quality of a product.
- Waiting a week for a package to deliver.
- Repeatedly filling in billing data.
- And much more.
With regards to your own ecommerce store, you can utilize A/B testing when comparing:
- Navigation organization.
- Headline viability.
- Various page layouts.
- Body duplicate.
- CTA design and copy.
- Product images and Website photography.
- New pricing plans.
- New visual styling for a page.
- And much more.
The excellence of A/B testing is that you can efficiently work through all these areas, gradually and reliably improving each one to increase conversions.
A/B Testing Examples
A/B tests can come in numerous shapes and sizes.
Here are a couple of wireframes highlighting the types of A/B tests you may see as a major aspect of an optimization program.
Product Detail Page A/B Test
In this test example, we plan to check whether placing more educational data about the product higher on the page will influence the add-to-cart rate.
Form A/B Test
In this test example, we aim to see whether buyers are more inclined to finish a form with fewer fields and simpler placeholder text within the fields.
Navigation A/B Test
In this test example, we intend to see whether consumers can better navigate a site and checkout by taking a look at the menu at the top level rather than through a drop-down menu.
How Can You Find The Perfect A/B Testing Solution?
When it comes to A/B testing, skill and experience are just as, if not more important than the tools themselves.
First, you have to decide whether you want to do the testing in-house or hire an agency to do the testing.
Evaluating Skill Sets
Regardless, of your choice, here are some of the key skills to search for in optimization and testing are:
- Statistical analysis.
- UX design.
- Data research.
- Behavioral psychology.
- Persuasive writing.
- Conversion methodology for conversion optimization.
- Project management.
- Information architecture.
- User research.
- HTML and CSS.
- And more.
CRO is a powerful process requiring an assortment of skills.
Each of these skills contributes extraordinarily to the CRO process, and the absence of any of them can prompt ineffective A/B testing.
Utilizing CRO Service Providers for A/B Testing
In addition to the proliferation of SaaS applications designed to enable you to implement A/B testing, various service-based businesses offer conversion rate optimization and A/B testing as a ‘done-for-you’ service.
There is an oversimplified way to do A/B testing and an increasingly methodical and professional way to do it. Ensure you’re getting the latter.
A few things to look for in A/B testing services are:
- Case studies that show previous CRO success. These case studies should clarify the particular processes they used to achieve their outcomes.
- Whether they offer CRO as an add-on to other marketing services or focus explicitly on CRO.
- Whether they’re data-driven. CRO ought to always be data-driven. Any methodology that depends on intuition, or hunches, isn’t CRO.
Conclusion: Don’t Neglect A/B Testing
A/B testing is one of the most powerful and viable ways to drive ecommerce growth.
Some of the greatest, most profitable companies on the planet have made their massive success in huge part due to A/B testing.
Generally speaking, if Amazon does something, other online stores should pay attention.
A/B testing worked for Amazon. It will work for you.
