An Insight into AB Testing
We’re always looking for ways to ensure our websites offer both great user experiences and offer ROI for us and our clients. That’s why we regularly perform AB testing to try to maximise results.
Optimizely, one of the largest AB testing platforms, defines the process as “essentially an experiment where two or more variants of a page are shown to users at random, and statistical analysis is used to determine which variation performs better for a given conversion goal.”
In most cases, AB testing is used to improve the conversion rate of something. For example, we could have a clickable button and test it in two different colours to see if one colour outperforms the other. However, whilst we do often use AB testing for optimizing conversion rates, we find it especially effective when we’re making design changes to our websites. It allows us to pick a design that best suits our target audience based on actual user behavior rather than simply guessing.
AB testing also allows you to benchmark. It gives you a measure of what success is that you can look to compare future tests against. Statistics to use as a measuring stick for every test. You will, of course, find that you won’t raise the bar every time, but even tests that don’t achieve statistical improvement allow you to generate a fuller picture of what does and doesn’t resonate with your audience. That can only be a positive thing.
Our tests have allowed us to gather crucial data on how our audience consumes and interacts with the information on our pages, and we have seen some very encouraging results from these. One example of this was the testing of various combinations of images, text and call-to-actions which resulted in a 97.51% increase in email signups to our newsletter in a 12-month period, which we have continued to fine tune with further testing.
There are several ways in which you can take advantage of this increase in signups, such as booking an email direct into prospective students’ inboxes. Please do drop me a message via [email protected] if you’d like to find out more.