Welcome to part two of our webinar recap! We recently held a webinar focused on digital marketing and how to optimize for success in 2017. In our previous post we outlined the topics of SEO and Email Marketing – today we will discuss A/B Testing and how this can help you achieve success in 2017.
Corte Swearingen, Director of Testing and Optimization at Americaneagle.com, spoke on this topic for our recent webinar.
Corte began by explaining that A/ B testing is a method of conducting scientifically controlled experiments on your site. Rather than guessing at what changes might be beneficial to make, he explained that you can test those changes out to figure out which ones will actually work.
First, we identify a page that we’d like to improve and then change an image or a headline, or even radically redesign the page. We then send 50% of traffic to the original page and 50% to the page with alterations in order to see which page is most successful.
Most companies spend large amounts of money on visitor acquisition strategies, but virtually nothing for on-site optimization.
The below graphic demonstrates how small increases in the conversion rate can have a drastic effect on your revenue, clearly showing the power of small improvements. This is actual data from a real ecommerce company. If you were to focus on improving your conversion rate, it can have a drastic impact on incremental revenue.
Americaneagle.com recently conducted some A/B split test for our client Magid Glove. We decided to test the impact of adding a 120% price match guarantee icon to the page. The site visitors were then split 50/50 between the original product page and the new version of the product page with the price match guarantee on it, to determine which was preferred by potential customers.
The new version of the product page, including the 120% price match guarantee, was proven to be most successful. Our winning test variation improved conversion rate from 3.67% to 4.81%, showing a 31.3% improvement in completed transactions with a 99% statistical significance.
Corte then gave an overview of the important steps to take to get started with A/ B Testing:
- Identify all important actions on your site (key performance indicators – including ‘make a purchase’, ‘sign up for a free trial’, ‘enter a contest’.) A/ B testing will improve all of the KPI’s on your site.
- Create a KPI dashboard in Google Analytics.
- Understand website friction points - use inexpensive 3rd party tools like Hotjar and usertesting.com to better understand problem areas within your site.
- Build out your testing roadmap – for all major site funnels, identify site friction points within each step of the funnel, and come up with test ideas to alleviate those friction points.
- Report Results.
For further information on any of the topics we’ve mentioned in this webinar, get in touch and we’d be delighted to help! You can also view the presentation slides or watch the recording.
