What Is AB testing?
A/B testing, also called a split test, is a process of comparing two versions of a page at the same time in order to see which version gives the best conversion rate. It is a type of Conversion Rate Optimisation. Using AB testing, you can find out which version of a page is better without having to apply them to your site first. It also means that you can know for certain if something works or doesn’t, unlike making a change based on your own opinions or estimations. This means that you don’t waste time making an ineffective change. More importantly it has an excellent potential ROI, since you don’t have to spend any money to run the test. If you have an in-house web design team, you don’t need to pay extra after the test to enact any recommended changes either. The principles of AB testing are simple: identify what you want to change (and why), make the change, run the test. Hope that you get a statistically significant result. You can get every single feature on your page tested if you have the time and money (if engaging an outside agency), so choosing which feature to test doesn’t have to be the be-all-and-end-all. However there are many ways that AB testing can give an inexperienced user incorrect results: not running the test for long enough, not running it for full weeks, not calculating your minimum sample, doing a test when your website gets very little traffic, and perhaps most importantly running your test based on a hunch or on anything that isn’t backed up by quantitative research. That is the whole point of AB testing, to produce a factual result which if implemented will definitely assist your site. Running a test on a variable that you haven’t researched thoroughly is likely to waste your time. Time is money, after all! Thanks for reading What Is AB Testing? Please let us know your opinions on the article, or on AB testing as a whole. What has or hasn’t worked for you? What is AB testing? is part 7 of our “What Is …?” series. This series gives the reader a brief introduction to the basics of digital marketing. Check out the rest of the series for information on SEO, PPC, CRO, ORM, SMO, and digital marketing, with more to come. Error: Contact form not found.