A/B Testing In Digital Marketing: A Step-by-Step Guide

Building a website for getting customers and organic traffic isn’t that easy. As you are trying so hard to grow your business, it can be quite difficult to tell which of your assets are working well with customers. This is where A/B testing in digital marketing helps resolve the problem with ease. Most of us know what this process is, but we are here to explain its importance and how to run A/B tests in marketing in this step-by-step guide.

A/B testing, also known as split testing in marketing, is the process of comparing and testing two versions of a particular webpage to learn which one is more effective than the other. Just think of two types of lemonades offered to customers for tasting, the first being sweet and the other being salty. Both products will offer different outcomes. A/B testing is somewhat like this.

A/B Testing in Digital Marketing

The process involves creating two different versions of the same digital web asset, namely control and variant, and testing to see which one customers respond to best. Here, the term ‘control’ is the original version of the webpage or marketing material to be tested. Whereas ‘variant’ signifies the newer version of the web page that is included in the test.

A/B testing is normally implemented in scenarios such as landing pages, display ads, marketing emails, and social posts. When the test is performed, half of the audience receives version A of the website, while the other half receives version B of the website. The performance is measured on various aspects, such as the percentage of people making a purchase or clicking a link, etc.

To perform A/B testing for different web elements, it must include the following set of factors:

• An active marketing campaign
• Various sets of web elements: 
• A clear goal and hypothesis

We’ll explain our goals and hypotheses later on. In fact, instead of the usual two-variable testing, you can even test more than 1 variable at once.

Importance of A/B testing strategies

Performing an A/B test enables companies and businesses to analyze and make careful changes to their user experience, all the while collecting data on the impact it makes. By randomly assigning two versions, A & B, of a marketing asset to the users and measuring key metrics, businesses can make well-informed decisions based on valid evidence instead of assumptions. This continued process minimizes risks and maximizes the efficiency of the marketing campaign and higher ROI. Still want to know why this process is important? Let the benefits speak for themselves:

Lower risks, higher rewards

One of the biggest perks of A/B testing in digital marketing is its minimal risks and higher rewards in the long term. Whenever things don’t work the way they should, you can perform an A/B test and see whether the newer version has a good user experience and has any significant change. In case the newer version doesn’t live up to expectations, you can roll back to an older version which worked well.

Improved customer conversion rates

Performing split testing in marketing leads to higher conversion rates. This is one of the primary reasons why marketers experiment with this process. If you have a landing page that converts at around 2%, and you want more than that, A/B testing makes it possible. You can experiment and tweak almost every single element on the webpage to achieve a higher conversion rate.

Minimal Bounce Rates

You build a website with high hopes that customers will visit and convert, but something strange happens. You start noticing that most users are just leaving quickly after visiting your site it is also called an increasing bounce rate. What has gone wrong? Is it the content, the visuals, the user experience, or the website’s design contributing to the bounce rate? There are many questions. By performing Split testing in marketing on specific elements, you can understand what the problem is and thus make necessary improvements to keep visitors on your site for longer.

How to run A/B Tests In Marketing

Running an A/B testing process involves a series of steps. Now that you know the basics of A/B testing, you should know exactly where to set up such a process and run it to improve your campaign performance. We have compiled the necessary A/B testing best practices to get started with ease:

Step-1. Identify Your Objective

Before you do the testing, make sure to have a clear outcome. What are you planning to achieve through A/B testing best practices? More conversions, click-through rates, or higher engagement? There are many reasons for this, but you have to focus on the main goal and make sure to achieve it.

Step-2. Formulate A Hypothesis

Once you have identified your objective, the next phase is to formulate a hypothesis. It should be a clear statement that predicts what you expect to happen. Having a well-defined goal helps you shape the hypothesis of your split testing in marketing. For example, if you wish to increase click-through rates on your landing page or website, your hypothesis should be something like, “Changing the CTA button colour from grey to green will help improve click-through rates”.

Step-3: Choose What to Test

When it comes to website A/B testing strategies, there are various elements available. This is why it’s important to focus on one of the variables and isolate its impact. Some of these elements include headlines, CTA, images, and landing page layouts. It is crucial to prioritize tests that will have the most significant potential impact.

Step-4: Create your variants

Variants in A/B testing strategies refer to another version of a specific webpage that is created to find out which one is superior to the other. So, when you are planning to perform a testing process, make sure to create a variant version to test alongside your original control version. In a standard A/B test, you’ll have two variants: A and B. Here, variant A is the original version of your webpage, while B is the version that incorporates the desired changes to your variable.

Step-5: Run The Test

Once you have fixated on your goals and created the hypothesis and the variants, it’s time to run the tests. What you do here is assign equal traffic to respective versions. For example, if you are running A/B testing strategies with two website variants, you’ll have to split the traffic either 50/50 or 60/40. This means that the audiences are divided into two groups where one half is exposed to variant A and the other half to variant B. The test must be run until you reach a stage with a significant difference between the two variants.

Step-6: Analyze the data

Once the test is over, analyze the results to see whether the newer variant offers the hypothesized result over the original version. If there is any noticeable change, consider testing another element.

Step-7: Implement the winning version

Once you get the results on which is the superior version, the final stage is to implement the respective winning version in your marketing campaign. Since it delivers better results than expected, this will be reflected in the overall campaign performance. However, you’ll have to keep monitoring the performance and ensure it is working as expected.

Winding Up

A/B testing is a highly efficient and cost-effective strategy for analyzing your target audience’s response to a specific design or content change in a marketing campaign. The original version (control) and a newer version (variant) are often compared and tested by assigning both versions to users evenly. This ensures that the site’s overall user experience isn’t disrupted. 

You can learn about A/B testing and other related topics, such as AI testing automation tools, by consulting the services of the best search engine optimization company in Dubai. GTECH is the first name that should come to your mind. We have created countless successful business growth stories for clients globally.