What is A/B testing? Otherwise known as split-testing, A/B testing is probably the most effective way of measuring, and optimizing the efficiency (or effectiveness) of your websites, blogs, apps, projects, etc,. Everything that can be modified to show a different version of itself, can be used for A/B testing purposes.

Essentially, A/B tests help us conclude (figure out) which types of our pages are performing the best. It can do this by splitting a page in two different styles, and then giving each style an equal amount of traffic. After a few tests, you begin to see which of the styles is performing better.

Here is a simple breakdown of how A/B testing works:

  1. Build multiple versions of your website. (Using the visual designer!)
  2. Define the action steps for visitors. (View, Download, Signup, Buy, etc,.)
  3. Split the website traffic for the different versions you built.
  4. Learn which version is performing the best. (Bring home the bacon.)
  5. Rinse & Repeat!

I wouldn’t say it’s especially easy or simple to come across a great A/B testing tool in this market, but you’ll find many great tools out there – doing the job very well, even exceptionally in some cases.

Farm Data from Testing

Traditionally, you’ll get multiple ways of concluding tests and analysis.

Here they are:

  • A/B Testing — Traditional way of testing. Easily change the appearance of your pages, and launch them as separate designs. The software will automatically divide and allocate the appropriate traffic for each design. Data becomes available immediately.
  • Multivariate Testing — In a multivariate test campaign, you are not testing different versions of your web pages, but testing between different versions of elements inside a web page.
  • Split URL Testing — With split URL testing you can check how well two different URL’s are comparing to each other.
  • iOS Apps Optimization — You should expect to find some tools that enable to A/B test your mobile content (apps, etc,.) just as well. Mobile is growing very rapidly right now, so there is plenty of potential for such tests.

You get four ways of optimizing and testing your designs, looks and feel of pages. All the data is recorded and kept for your convinience, keep in mind that finding out which design works the best for the given website, can help to make better decisions for your other websites! (win-win situation)

Insights from Statistics

You don’t just build a separate design and let it be, with A/B tests – you can setup goals that you want to meet, and then build designs to experiment with those goals. You can get alerts and reports for every version that you build, if something on a design is performing better than on the original – you’ll learn about it very quickly.

I like how intuitive the dashboards of many different A/B tools can be, not only can you share your performance data with your co-workers and friends, you can also quickly compare and monitor the performance of all of your A/B designs. Learn to use the segmentation feature to really dig deep into the mind of your customers, find out what they like and what makes them spend those dollars!

Know Your Hotspots with Heatmaps

Are you new to heatmaps? A heatmap is a simple way of monitoring where your visitors and customers are clicking and browsing when visiting your website. It’s one of the best tools for gaining insight on how your visitors are understanding your design choices, and believe it or not – small changes can make a big difference.

It’s already old technology for many, but if you’ve been meaning to optimize for users – why not give this feature a try? You can only walk away as a winner. By learning where your visitors are clicking, browsing and leaving their mouse to rest – you can integrate special call-to-action buttons or elements in those places, and once again – maximize your earning potential.

Learn to Personalize

This is probably one of my favorite features when it comes to A/B testing software. Personalization means that you’re essentially building something for a specific set of people. Study the photo below and see how building personalized pages could mean more business to you.

The really great thing is, all of these features are so simple to integrate – it doesn’t even feel like you’re doing anything, the results seem to roll in by themselves. Though, the pricing of these tools might be the one thing to bring you back to reality.

Get to Know Your Audience

But, what is pricing comparing to learning more about your audience? True, A/B testing won’t help you with realizing what kind of content you should publish, but it will give you insight on how to position your CTA elements, and how to design your pages for the users. You’re investing into your own long-term success, I don’t see anything wrong with that.

Conclusion

Good A/B tests will help you conclude the things you knew and didn’t know about your audience, are you ready to take your community relationships to the next level? It does sound intriguing doesn’t it, but all of the case studies and success stories that I’ve read – have always led to better understanding of ones community.

Have you done A/B testing in the past?