How to Run a Successful A/B Test

Do you think that A/B testing refers to blood types or something else completely outside the realm of checking the effectiveness of your landing pages? If so, you aren’t alone, it would seem; even though A/B testing can provide a ton of benefits in lowering bounce rates, improving click through rates and open rates, and generating more sales, most marketers have never tried A/B testing.

It might seem like A/B testing is too difficult and time consuming, so it’s put off for another day, but the truth is that A/B testing is not all that difficult. It’s essential to do this testing, because it will help your visitors give you the most important gift they can, other than sales: their reasons why you aren’t getting those sales!

Let’s start off by talking about what A/B testing is. It’s also called split testing, and it’s an experiment. You take two different versions of a landing page, and test them side by side. You take the scientific method, and apply it to your online marketing!

Sidebar: what’s the scientific method, you ask? To put it simply, it’s 5 steps:

1. Evaluate existing information
2. Develop a hypothesis
3. Test your hypothesis using an experiment
4. Measure your results
5. Take action on the new information

In other words, you’re going to perform regular testing on your landing pages, and use the information from that testing to improve your landing page.

Okay, back to the important stuff. A/B testing helps you transform your visitors into real, paying customers! So how to run a successful AB test? Follow these guidelines.

First, test from scratch. Assign equal traffic to two different versions of your landing page with two or three different main ideas, and see which one gets the most sales or conversions. Once you’ve picked your winner, change one thing about it and test the new version against your winner. Keep doing that, and you’ll optimize your landing page!

Now, the question is, what should you test? Don’t limit yourself, since you can test just about anything, but here are some examples of what you can test.

• Headlines
• Sub Headlines
• Images
• Videos
• Structure
• Length
• Colors
• Testimonials
• Content
• And so much more!

Make sure you don’t run your test for too short a time or too long a time, or you won’t get as accurate data as you can. If you test for too short a time, you may see statistical anomalies that aren’t really reflective of your landing pages’ effectiveness, missing out on telling you the changes that you really need to make.

On the other hand, testing for too long can delay things too much. Find a happy medium somewhere, testing for maybe 1-2 weeks at the most, and you’ll be able to draw conclusive results from your testing.

Using effective A/B testing, you can make the most out of your landing page strategy. You’ll know which elements are working, and which aren’t, and you can make the changes needed to generate the leads or sales that are so vital to growing and maintaining your business.