The Benefits of A/B Testing

In an increasingly difficult world as a business, with customers requiring more and more needs, knowing where you stand with customers is often a mindfield. With split testing of your content, pay-per-click ads, landing pages and other advertising forms, you’re able to test how customers perceive your content and which ones sell you the most products or services.

In this blog, we’ll be looking at the key ways A/B testing has proven successful for many businesses and how you can start your own split testing today.

You’re able to gather more information on your customers

Regardless of whether your A/B test was successful, a failure, or inconclusive, you’re understanding your customers more than before and having that chance to see where you can change or improve things. Customer research should be continually conducted throughout the year to understand changes in the market, if any world events have changed the way we shop (like the COVID-19 outbreak) and find emerging new markets.

You’re saving money in the long run

Knowing what your customers click on and interact with means you’ll only be pushing ads that cater to those specific needs, thanks to the efforts of split testing. You may be spending a little more than usual on your split testing, but you’ll find that that cost can effectively be reimbursed if you find the best content to sell your products and/or services. Over time, gaining more customers and sales will boost your revenue.

Improved user engagement

As a result of continued testing of content and ads, you’re going to improve your overall site performance and user engagement on social media at the same time. Prioritising your content based on the results of your split tests means only quality customers will be entering the site and giving you the chance to boost sales. Increased user engagement also means a lower bounce rate and an increased click-through rate on both your website and on any social platforms you use regularly.

Reduced risk of falling sales

Understanding your customers down to a tee only means improved ways of working and retaining customers. Reducing how many customers turn away a sale is the ultimate goal for a lot of business owners, and split testing will help with alleviating that pressure. Major decisions you make for the business can now be backed by user research and testing, and mistakes are reduced to a minimum to help improve business output.

So you know the benefits; how can I start split testing today?

There are a number of ways you could work on testing using your own methods, but you could also set up a tool to track and measure the performance of your split tests as well. 

First of all, you should look at what you want to find out from customers. Do you want to know where they click on a landing page, or how long they stay on a certain page? Or are you testing multiple CTAs to see which is the most popular with customers? Whether your split test is small or large you’re still learning about your customers and their impact on your business.

Measure the performance of your split tests by following click-through rates, bounce rates and qualified leads. If one of the split test variants is losing customers, remove it from the cycle and add another. Keep trying and testing which ones will work with your customers and which are the most successful.

Finally, there’s no pressure to know what your customers want straight away. There are a number of things you can do to help support your split testing work, such as market research, building personas, surveys and business networking events. Use split testing as a part of your overall research to build the perfect target market for your product or service.