Why every entrepreneur should do A/B testing

In the process of growing the business, every entrepreneur wants to know whether they are making the right choices and taking the right steps. Many of them choose A/B testing to cure this splitting headache.

When it comes to A/B testing, your thoughts might merely stop at a method of choosing “the better.” But there are a lot of things to say about A/B testing beyond its proven possibility. In fact, over 10,000 A/B experiments have been implemented yearly by prominent companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Booking.com.

Let’s get through all questions about A/B testing and the impacts of it on your business.

What is A/B testing?

A/B testing⁠—also called split testing⁠—is the approach of comparing two versions of something to learn which one is better and more effective. In the digital age, many businesses use A/B testing as a process of implementing two versions of the same marketing asset with just one varying element to select the one that works better. Those assets can include a web page, display ad, marketing emails, or social content.

For example, you write two phrases for a call-to-action button (CTA) on your landing page. You would run these two different versions at the same time to collect data on performance to find the better one.

The A/B testing process

The general workflow of an A/B testing campaign is something like this:

• First, you decide on the baseline. This is essentially what your app or web page looks like at the moment. Second, you build a hypothesis that you want tested. For instance, if your ‘Call To Action’ currently says ‘Buy Now’, your hypothesis could be that changing this CTA to “Click to Proceed” would yield better results. Once you decide on the hypothesis, you create a second variation of your app or web page.
• Now, you have two variations of the same page – the baseline and the hypothesis to be tested. It is now time to segment your audience. There are a few ways to do this. You may simply choose to display one of the two variations at random to different visitors. Or, if you want to test it among your mailing list, you may split your list at random into two and share these two variations to these two segments of users. 
• The next step is to let the experiment run its course and capture the results. Finally, analyze the results to see if your hypothesis is true or not. 

5 reasons why every entrepreneur should do A/B testing

1.   Improve content engagement

By using A/B testing, companies have a chance to evaluate every aspect of the content they create to find which version generates better results. That’s why it has a positive impact on content engagement. The solution you are looking for is the one that creates more value for your targeting customers and as a result, gains more engagement.

A/B testing provides you with insightful analytics on every element of your content and the audience’s interest, which is useful for other facets of marketing campaigns. The result of each testing version will reflect directly on the number presenting the audience’s engagement, such as the number of clicks, likes, shares, or the number of visitors converted into customers. The result shows up precisely, and companies can choose the winning version without any difficulty.

2.   Reduce bounce rate

If you find your website’s bounce rate is scary and start finding solutions to lower the percentage of it, A/B testing is a good idea.

The popular reasons for the high bounce rate are poor user experience and irrelevant content. When your article shows up on the search result page, and a shopper clicks on it as they feel it might be useful for them due to its title. But when the page opens, they can’t find the relevant information, they will come back to the search result page, and your page will receive a “bounce”.

Testing different landing pages will help you learn which one drives better user engagement and which doesn’t. A/B testing allows you to analyze specific elements on your pages, and quickly find out which needs to be improved. When you have a new idea that you want to implement on your landing page, use A/B testing to see if it works.  Because the taste and demands of audiences are changing all the time, it may be challenging to determine which will resonate best with your audience. The more you test, the more profound insights you get into the behaviour of your audience.

3.   Increase conversion rate

As we’ve talked about the reduced bounce rate thanks to A/B testing, there’s no doubt that this technique is also an excellent way to increase conversion rates. A/B testing is one of the most popular methods used in conversion rate optimization. With A/B testing, you can test multiple variations of each element on your website till you define the best possible version. This process helps you find the best solutions to improve user experience, making visitors spend more time on your site, reduce your bounce rate, and increase conversion rate.

An example is Tulos’s case. The company used A/B testing to make some changes to the webpage of their client, Scandinavian Outdoor Store. Their goal was to convert more visitors to customers with more added-to-cart products and reduce the bounce rate. Therefore, they implemented A/B testing on the headline of the page.

The original page included only the line Men’s Clothing without any text under the headline. The other version was more informative and functional, with the short text block containing links to the best bargain price products of each category.

Of course, the new version gauged the positive responses from the visitors, resulted in better engagement for Tulos’s website, and increased conversion rate by 127%.

4.   Minimize risk

A/B testing eradicates a lot of risks as you make decisions based on accurate data rather than subjective opinions. With A/B testing, you can make incremental changes in each part of your page instead of modifying all things at the same time. If your test is not as successful as expected, it can jeopardize your whole page and current conversion rate.

A/B testing allows you to make minimal modifications, resulting in increased return on investment. For example, when you change or update the product description, you don’t know how visitors react to the change. A/B testing on different copies of the product description is a feasible solution to ascertain which one powerfully resonates with the visitors.

Making business decisions becomes painless due to the more predictable outcome of the A/B tests. In case the change could decrease conversions, don’t move forward with it. You can continue careful changes until you get the reward.

5.   Easy to analyze data

A/B testing generates straight-forward metrics, which makes it the easiest and most effective way to evaluate the results. You can determine which one is the “winner” quickly based on the statistics that your tests reveal.

Relying on engagement metrics like the time people spend on your site or the average number of people who visit your page, just by looking at the numbers, you can see how changed elements influence your page. Accordingly, it’s much easier to tweak your site to its full potential.

Conclusion

Hence, you can define which comes closer to your ultimate goal, and then align the most optimal ones for your marketing activities as well as other areas of your business. Let’s try something new, and the results will speak for themselves. Even learning from failure is worth your time and effort.