If You’re Not A/B Testing, You’re Missing Out On Sales

A/B testing is an extremely powerful tool for marketers. In fact, it should be an integral part of every marketer’s arsenal. The truth, however, is that many marketers have yet to take full advantage of A/B testing—in fact, only 44 percent of marketing professionals use the technique.

If you’re a marketer, this is great news for you. A/B testing allows you to refine and re-refine your marketing efforts so that they are fully optimised to your audience’s preferences—and the fact that the tool is underused means that if you do it, you’re likely to get ahead of the crowd.

Indeed, many of the most successful companies make extended use of A/B testing. This is no wonder when Barack Obama was reported to have raised an additional $60 million as a result of A/B testing!

What is A/B Testing?

A/B testing (or split testing) is a near-perfect example of the much coveted simple yet powerful idea. For marketers, A/B testing makes it possible to test two versions of a particular piece of content (for example, a landing page, newsletter, email, etc.) or a function (say, a call to action) by randomly displaying to a specified percentage of traffic two different versions of that content or function.

By monitoring which piece of content or function performs better, marketers can alter variables to see which has a positive effect on the desired output of that content or function (downloads, click-throughs, replies, and so on). By repeating this process, and continually altering the best performing versions, marketers can refine their work until it has maximum impact.

For A/B testing to be effective:

• Changes must be made incrementally—It’s important that you don’t make too many changes to your content or function at once since, with too many variables, you won’t know what’s making visitors happy and what isn’t. Only by making small changes will you be able to see exactly what your audience prefers, and then build on it. (Note, this means that A/B testing will take time—but who said it was going to be easy or that there were quick fixes?!)
• It must be well timed—As a digital marketer, you already know the importance of timing when it comes to posting online content. Web traffic comes in peaks and troughs, and in order to make the most of any split test you need to test at (your) peak times. The optimal time varies for every business; fortunately, your social media marketing tool should be able to tell you this information.
• It must be taken to completion—An A/B test is only complete when the piece of content or the function you’re testing can no longer be improved. There will inevitably be a point at which the improvements you see with each modification will start to plateau. That’s natural— no growth can be sustained forever. However, stopping short of this point only does you a disservice. To get the most of A/B testing, you need to see it through to the bitter end.

These may sound like simple pointers, but since only one out of eight A/B tests drive significant change, I’d suggest that not everyone is sticking to them.

A/B Testing: What Can It Be Applied To?

Unfortunately, not everything is a candidate for A/B testing. However, I’d recommend that you apply the technique to as many areas you possibly can. Earlier I mentioned some different candidates for A/B testing, but here is a more comprehensive list of some of the best applications:

• Call to action buttons (CTAs)—Variables include copy, button design, colour, position on site, etc.
• Newsletter sign-up buttons—Variables include copy, button design, colour, position on site, etc.
• Landing pages—Variables include page layout, palette, copy, call to action placement, etc.
• Email marketing—Variables include email layout, how the recipient is addressed, message copy, design, etc.
• Content marketing – variables include updating copy, headlines, images used in conjunction, variations to the actual content, etc.
• Social Ads – variables include advertising copy, accompanying image, advertising format, etc.

The Key Benefits of A/B Testing

As you can imagine, the process of constant refinement to your marketing materials will lead to many advantages. By constantly optimising, tweaking, and upgrading your materials, you can expect to see real improvements to:

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