Test or die: Why you should master the art of A/B testing
In digital marketing, A/B testing is used on a daily basis. (Or at least it should be). Whether you’re an experienced Testing Machine or new to digital marketing, below you’ll find some key takeaways for successful A/B testing and how to apply these for your business.
Table of contents
- What is A/B testing in digital marketing?
- A/B Testing drives your growth. Period.
- How does split testing work?
- A/B testing tips
What is A/B testing in digital marketing?
An A/B test is a form of split testing in which 2 variants of, for example, two advertisements are tested against each other in order to increase the conversion rate. A conversion does not always have to be a sale, let’s be clear about that.
A conversion stands for the conversion of a visitor into someone who takes action. Optimizing your website to get more results (such as leads and sales) from your visitors.
The two variants (A and B) are shown alternately to the visitors. 50% of the visitors see version A and the other 50% see version B. In both cases, the conversion ratio is measured, and you can see exactly which version works better. In case of large volumes of traffic, one sometimes chooses to a/b test a small part of the entire traffic. For example 20%.
High tempo testing drives growth. Period.
By testing various things, you will learn more quickly what works and what does not.
For start-ups, for example, it is important to know what works as soon as possible. Once you know what works, you can start scaling it up.
Be careful, do not make decisions until the difference is statistically significant.
Tip: 11 of the Best A/B Testing Tools for 2021
It does not have to be about customer acquisition. It may also be about product features, retention techniques, … Scale what’s working, kill what doesn’t work.
So far so good — but that’s just theory. Let’s dive into a real life example.
How does split testing work?
A/B testing is a profession in which there is no place for guesswork.
To measure is to know, and the smallest details can make the difference between a profitable or a loss-making business.
The simplest form is an A/B test in which you compare two variants of your ads. You serve your ad variants to the same target audience, and let the data speak for itself.
Take this example. This is a split test of Facebook Ads, for my own agency: addvalue-agency.be
In this split test, we had tested 2 copy variants. The same creative, the same headline, but a different copy variant.
First we created some ad copy focusing on the sales angle and messaging, and the second one was about business growth.
Angle = an ad angle or hook is the intriguing element in your sales pitch, marketing campaign, or brand growth strategy. It’s essentially the thing that captures your customer’s attention and forces them to take notice.
As an agency, we specialize in the acquisition of high-quality leads, which is why we used these angles.
It turns out that variation A performed better for this target audience. In other words, the sales angle as described above seemed to resonate more with the people in our current target audience.
If you have read up to here, you probably have a real interest in a/b testing. If you want to go even deeper into it, I recommend watching this video as well.
But first, read this article all the way through, we’re not quite done yet. :)
A/B testing tips:
- Document your A/B tests: We document our experiments in a Google sheet, designed by Grow with Ward.
- Be data-driven: no guesswork, focus on data
- Scale what’s working (if possible)
- Never stop a/b testing
- Limit A/B tests as much as possible to one variable that changes -> otherwise you have no idea what works!
- Never focus on vanity metrics when analysing your A/B test, focus on the end result / OMTM.
If you have any questions on how to set up an A/B test for your business case, or are interested in some more real life cases, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn!
