The importance of A/B testing for your business

It is a fact that businesses need to invest money into digital marketing solutions to grow their brand and generate leads. After all, how else do you expect customers to learn about your business? The question that you need to constantly ask yourself when creating landing pages and marketing campaigns is – can we make it better? And the answer to this question is simple – test it. A/B testing has become a fundamental way of measuring the quality of campaigns and landing pages and learning how to improve them. In this article, Digital Dot explores the importance of A/B testing for your business.

What is A/B testing?

• Simply put, A/B testing is the process of comparing two versions of the same landing page, email campaign, or other marketing assets, with minor differences to determine how variations can impact the overall performance of the campaign. 

For example, take a landing page and change only the colors, or the headline, or the CTAs. Give the original version to one part of your target audience and the modified version to another part of the same audience. And watch the impact that it will make. By changing only a single element or a couple of them, you can identify which version works better for your audiences. And this can help you make more informed marketing decisions in the future.

When is the best time to implement A/B testing for your business?

WHENEVER YOU CAN. It’s completely understandable that you might not have the time to fully commit to running A/B tests on every piece of content you create. However, what you can do is create a plan for regular testing. You will then set clear goals to achieve and analyze. The more time and resources you invest in A/B testing, the better your chances of improving your conversion rate will be. It all comes down to finding that ideal formula that works wonders for your brand. And A/B testing can help your business get there.

What should you test?

You start with the content that actually targets audiences and can help you gather leads. And so, here are the types of content to focus A/B testing for your business on:

• Landing Pages
• Email Campaigns
• Paid Ads
• Social Media Ads
• Calls to Action

Of course, these are just the most impactful types of content that you can run tests on. There are also press releases, updates, blog posts, etc. The thing with using A/B testing in your marketing activities is that you can apply it to any type of content. And the more you test, the better your understanding will be of what it is that your audiences want to see.

What are the benefits of A/B testing for your business?

1. Creating engaging content

No matter how large or small the campaign is, every marketer understands just how important the choice of words can be. Words are like colors – they affect everyone differently. That is why it’s important to carefully consider every word you write as well as the holistic concept of your content. With A/B testing for your business, you can test your use of content and writing style to find the best fit for your audience. At the start and end of each day, your content marketing quality has a major influence on your brand growth. And A/B testing can give you the input you need to make it better.

2. Bounce rate reduction

Investing your energy and resources into creating a landing page only to have someone leave that page in a matter of seconds can be demoralizing. When your web pages or marketing campaigns have a high bounce rate, it is a clear indication that you are not on point. And A/B testing can help your business track and define the source of the issue. Whether it’s due to poor optimization efforts, bad targeting choices, or wrong content – A/B testing can help you identify the problem. And once you do, you can find a winning combination of elements to keep visitors on your site.

3. Conversion rate improvement

We mentioned earlier that the intensity of your A/B testing has a direct bearing on your ability to convert leads into customers. As does the improvements that you make based on those results. Crafting different versions of a single marketing campaign can help you determine which one generates the most leads. You can then use that formula and extend it to your landing pages. It might take a little longer to conduct all the testing and get to the optimal outcome, but it will be well worth it. And with the help and support of a New York SEO company by your side, you will be able to fully utilize the results from A/B testing.

4. Elevate the value of your offer

Once you manage to reduce your bounce rate and improve your chances to convert, it’s time to look at your products/services. The success of any business relies on its ability to meet targets and to then increase value with time. So, once you manage to find the optimal success formula for selling your regular products/services with efficiency, why stop there? Instead, why not use A/B testing for your business to explore innovative ways to sell your high-end products/services? After all, customers today are always willing to pay more for options that can give them more value.

5. Multi-functional application

The fact is that there is a number of factors that can influence the quality of user experience on your website. And what people need to realize is that A/B testing can be applied to any aspect of your digital business – from content, images, and forms on pages to online and offline marketing activities. You can test a diverse range of elements that can give your business a competitive edge and make your brand stronger in the eyes of customers.

6. Easy to read and analyze

You don’t need a team of experts to read the results of A/B testing. Certainly, having an SEO agency or in-house SEO team is necessary for more detailed and continuous testing. However, when it comes to the analysis of the results, it’s a matter of looking at two sets of identical metrics and deciding which works better for you. And so, reading the results of A/B testing comes down to determining a winner and loser.

• For example, if you were looking to create an optimal landing page for your product, you would create two pages with separate phone numbers. The page with more calls would be the obvious winner. It’s just that simple.

7. Enables low data rate testing

Nobody can argue the benefits of having large amounts of data to analyze. However, A/B testing doesn’t require more data to get clear results. Certainly, you don’t need to instantly jump at the initial results that this kind of testing provides. But you also don’t need to wait for weeks or months to determine which of the two pages that you created performs better. Instead, A/B testing for your business helps determine which of the two versions visitors find more engaging.

8. Lower risks

When you opt for switching between digital marketing companies or decide to reinvent your online presence, it can require a lot of changes. However, A/B testing offers a lot of positive changes without actually having to change that much. So, this approach helps businesses avoid unwanted risks by setting them up for guaranteed success. By testing and tailoring your resources for maximum performance, a business can increase its ROI no matter the time frame.

9. Lower cart abandonment rate

Cart abandonment is among the largest concerns for all e-commerce companies. When you have site visitors start to put together an order only to leave it half-done, it raises questions. With the attention span of modern consumers being as short as it is, cart abandonment rates are higher than ever. Studies show that the average cart abandonment rate is just below 70 percent. And we can agree that is a very high figure to deal with.

But despite there being a lot of external factors for people abandoning shopping carts, there are also internal ones there. And companies have the ability to influence the latter with the use of A/B testing with simple steps such as:

• Adjusting where and when the shipping costs will show;
• Structuring the checkout process into short multiple steps;
• Creating a progress line above the checkout process;
• Using engaging text and colors to guide people through the checkout process;
• etc.

A/B testing for your business can help you eliminate all the wild cards during checkout and just draw out and optimize the entire process. And this is where the expertise of professional web design companies can help you make headways.

10. Higher sales volume

And saving the best and most obvious advantage for last – A/B testing contributes to your overall volume of sales. All the above-mentioned arguments put together all lead to the obvious advantage of simply finding an optimal way of increasing the sales volume for your business.

Start testing your activities and growing your business today

We’ve established here that A/B testing for your business carries a lot of benefits that can help your brand grow through optimized and efficient campaigns. Digital Dot is a New York digital marketing agency with experience when it comes to creating full-scaled marketing strategies as well as customizing existing ones. Contact our team today to consult on how best to test your marketing efforts and make them better!