Online business is not just a whim of a curious consumer anymore. It has become the main source of income for many companies of all shapes and sizes.
It also showed an increasing potential, which attains new and higher records with each year, culminating with a revenue of $1.55 trillion for the worldwide market in 2015. This is a major reason why business owners should invest in a quality website and optimize it as much as possible to obtain a user-friendly online experience.
Six reasons why you should A/B test your business website
However, the main disadvantage of the online is that it is harder to see what happens on the other side of computer screens. Your website seems to be blind to how the visitors are interacting with commercial websites.
Nevertheless, there’s one strategy that can give you the same kind of insights as a real situation can, and that is A/B testing. By 2019, your website may get optimized enough to contribute to the expected worldwide sales amounted to $3.4 trillion.
The following are six reasons to convince you to apply this strategy to your business website.
1. Replace expectations with testing
What it is really interesting about A/B testing is that it is the only strategy that lets you assess the impact of your new campaign before sending it. It’s the pleasant equivalent of “trying before buying” concept.
The expectations of a team regarding their next marketing move might not reflect the reality because of their subjective opinions.
A marketing campaign can take up to several months of production, and its creators may not be able to clearly project the results that their actions will generate in the future.
A/B testing can eliminate the uncertain nature of a campaign and measure precisely the impact it will generate. It works like a new skin cream you purchase.
Before applying it on the whole body, you test it first on a small skin portion to see if it causes any negative reaction. If all goes well, you know that the cream was a great choice.
2. Receive useful data
The key to optimal results of an A/B test is to create two versions with one small difference. Changing too many features will create uncertainty over the cause that generated positive impact.
The good news is that you can use this strategy for an unlimited number of times to optimize every key aspect of your business website.
By focusing on one minor change, you will receive a maximum of data. The returning results will decide the winning version, and since it has only one difference, it is easy to understand the psychological reason behind the test better.
Moreover, keeping the changes small lets you draw correct conclusions without the use of a larger amount of traffic.
For example, you can test use different visual contents that deliver two types of persuasion messages. One of them can be the picture of a happy woman looking at the sign-up box, while the other can be that of the same woman looking with confidence and trust at the website visitors.
In many cases, the first visual concept proved to bring a higher number of subscriptions than the second one. Sometimes, all the marketing team needs is the power of suggestion.
3. Decide which elements to eliminate
The use of A/B testing is not only good at optimizing your website, but it also brings undeniable proof that a website feature is inefficient. This is the case when both versions return unsatisfactory results.
Usually, it is harder to notice that the website goes through a fluctuation of traffic when the users visit several web pages.
The data collected by other analytical tools represent the website as a whole. This means that the rates registered on the site represent the average numbers for all the pages.
So, instead of optimizing all the elements one by one, you can improve the rates by erasing the ones that hold the rates down.
4. Reduce shopping cart abandonment
The studies show an alarming phenomenon when it comes to cart abandonment rates. There’s an average total of 68.07% of customers who leave the online carts before finalizing their selected products.
If we take a look at any type of marketing sales funnel, we can see that consumers go through a complex number of stages before finally reaching the cart.
The click-through-rates are highest when the consumers are just leads, and get lower the more they advance in the funnel pipe. So, the drastic percentage of cart abandonment is a real concern for any business website.
Instead of resorting to disruptive strategies such as blocking the page after the customer exited it to display a survey request, you can use A/B testing. For example, you can assess the effects of different sources of assurance such as a privacy policy or a security seal.
5. Master the color psychology
The Internet is full of pieces of advice that persuade you red buttons are more effective than the green ones and vice versa. However, the truth is that the best choice of colors is different from a business website to another.
Your decision of choosing the best color palette for buttons should consider the following three aspects: the universal psychology of colors, the type of your brand, and context. The best way to make strike a balance between these three elements is to A/B test every possibility.
6. Solve the “Yours” vs. “My” mystery
Copywriting is another decisive factor that can differentiate a quality website from an ineffective one.
Words have the capacity to set the mood you want for your online visitors. They can summon hope, happiness, and success, or on the contrary, negative feelings such sadness or fear of losing something of value.
One of the many controversies from the field of copywriting is the “yours” vs. “my” dilemma. Some professionals state that the advertising text should address the viewers with the pronoun “You” which creates a powerful direct impact.
On the other hand, others see this pronoun as a break between two sides, “you and me.” Using “my” copy suggests the idea that the visitor is part of the website, which creates harmony and a sense of community.
However, the many A/B tests that were performed in this area were inconclusive. The best is to measure the impact of both types of copywriting on your own. The methods that work for others may not work for all, and the easiest way to solve this controversy is to see which one performs better for you.
So, these are the six reasons why you should start mastering the A/B tests as soon as possible. The insights you receive will help you optimize your business website and maximize its marketing capacity.
What is your experience? Have you already A/B test your website? Let us know in the comment section below!
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