A/B Testing How-To Guide

With the benefits of A/B testing under your belt, you’ll want to shift your focus to A/B testing integration. How can you integrate this process seamlessly into your marketing strategy?

Working variables into your future content comparisons require time and planning. That said, once you start actively including the A/B testing process into your campaign plans, you’ll find that the process lends itself to your business’s success.

If you’re wondering where to start integrating, or how to create an A/B testing plan, never fear.

There are a few simple steps you can follow to make A/B testing a natural part of your next content marketing campaign.

Step 1: What Do You Want To Test?

A/B testing allows you to experiment with just about every element of your platform. As such, you’ll need to decide ahead of time what variables you want to experiment with each of your tests.

You can fiddle with:

• Headlines
• CTA Copy
• CTA Location
• Copy Length and Style
• Images
• Pricing Offers
• Social Proof (Testimonials, Reviews)

Note that you will want to test your exchange pages or pages on your platform that see money changing hands. The consumers who visit your checkout have committed to a purchase, and you want to make the process as easy as possible. If you’re losing sales to a shoddy checkout, you’ll need to fix that problem ASAP.

Step 2: Create Your Variations

Once you’ve chosen an element to test, you need to create its variations. For example, if you want to experiment with pricing offers, create one- page listing one price and another with a price that’s either lower or higher than the original. The page (and price) consumers respond most enthusiastically to is the one you should eventually publish.

Step 3: Choose Your Tool

Before you can run an A/B test, you need an A/B testing tool. Part 4 of this series will dive into some of the tools you have available to you, but make sure the one you choose suits your budget and platform needs.

Step 4: Set Your Testing Period

A/B testing shows half of your consumers one variation of your content and the other half the other variation. Integrating A/B testing is a cinch, but you’ll need to determine ahead of time how long you want your test to run. We recommend avoiding new A/B testing when you’re in the middle of a sale or a particularly busy shopping season.

While both of these events will draw in significant crowds, you may find that your tests only confuse potential consumers, driving away sales as a result.

Instead, choose an average time of the month to test your content. Then, let your content test run for a week at a minimum. At that time, you’ll be able to gather data as it varies with consumers’ schedules. That data will, in turn, better reflect consumers’ normal behavior on your platform.

Step 5: Dig Into Your Results

Finally, set aside time to assess your test results. You’ll want to know, at a minimum:

• What consumer engagement of both pages looked like.
• Which page drew in the most positive engagement.
• What elements on the pages consumers responded most enthusiastically to.
• What each page’s bounce rates looked like.

With these trends in mind, it’ll be easy for you to determine which page “won” your test and is worth publication.

Integrating A/B testing into a content marketing campaign is easier than you might think. So long as you have the right tools at hand (and we’ll tell you some of our favorites in the next post), you’ll reap the benefits of the practice.

Conclusion

Is your company in need of help? MV3 Marketing Agency has numerous Marketing experts ready to assist you. Contact MV3 Marketing to jump-start your business.

Image attribution: adiruch na chiangmai – stock.adobe.com