At its core, driving visitors to your website and encouraging them to stay is a science. And like all sciences, the key to success is robust experimentation and actionable results. It can be strange to think that something as simple as altering the size of your CTA button, the location of your security badges, or the color palette of your images can have a measurable impact on your bounce rate. But it's true. Often overlooked details in your website's design can be the difference between losing a visitor before they've had the chance to see what you offer and earning yourself a loyal customer.
One way to find what works is to conduct A/B testing.
What is A/B Testing?
Next time you're at a friend's house watching Netflix, pay attention to the thumbnails on the home screen. Often, other people's Netflix accounts will display totally different images for the same shows. But why? Netflix, a company famous for focusing on AI-driven personalized experiences, conducts A/B testing on individual users. They tweak the images you see to appeal to your preferences, hoping it will give you that final push to hit the play button.
Put simply, A/B testing is a way to compare two versions of something (in this case, web elements) to determine which performs better. Then, armed with those results, you can craft a website or app that keeps visitors around for longer and increase the likelihood they will buy a product, subscribe to your service, or share your content. With this in mind, let's look at 10 A/B testing ideas you should try to take your website to the next level.
1. Content Headlines
Whether it's headlines on your landing page, blog, or anywhere else, wording your headline is serious business. To run A/B testing on your headline, you first need to choose your "control" version so you can compare it with a variant or variants. Typically, the A/B testing tool will send a percentage of your visitors to each variant and track metrics like the number of shares, click-through rate, conversions, bounce rate, and average reading time. Once every variant has been tested, a winner will be declared.
2. The Location of Your Security Badges
Most websites will ask users to part with their data. Sometimes you're asking for an email address, other contact details, or even credit card details. While this is standard practice, we also live in a world where data breaches are happening with alarming frequency. High-profile data breaches like LinkedIn's June 2021 leak and Facebook's April 2019 leak are burned into the public consciousness. The result? People are warier than ever to share sensitive information that could end up on a database on the dark web.
Luckily, security badges can help ease some of that anxiety. It's a good idea to conduct A/B testing to see whether the location and size of your security badges impact how many users submit their details.
3. Call-to-Action (CTA) Size
CTAs are a vital aspect of any thriving website, and with good reason - they remove friction and encourage visitors down the sales funnel. Therefore, your CTA buttons need to be prominent, attractive, and impossible to miss.
Start with your control CTA button and then amend it to make it bigger. For example, you could make the entire button bigger or play around with the font size or the blank space between the button and the words.
4. Landing Page Pricing
While price is often a deciding factor for consumers, not all websites display the price of their products prominently on the landing page. Some companies prefer to focus on the benefits before showing the price, or sometimes the pricing structure is too complex to display neatly.
However, a lack of clarity around pricing could be harming your conversions. It's a good idea to experiment with different ways of displaying pricing on your landing pages. Even where pricing isn't straightforward, you could state "starting from."
5. Number of Fields in the Contact Form
Lengthy contact forms allow you to obtain more valuable data from users, but they come at a cost. Long contact forms increase friction and lead to fewer conversions.
To find the magic number of fields to drive the most conversions while still getting valuable information, conduct A/B testing on the number of fields in your contact form.
6. Social Proof Placement
Reviews and testimonials can give visitors that extra push to convert because they communicate that real people trust your business. It's a good idea to play around with where you place these web elements. For example, some companies like to put their Google rating at the top of the homepage. Others put scrolling review elements on the homepage.
7. Single vs. Multi-step Forms
Have you ever wondered whether you could convert more users if they couldn't see the entire sign-up form before they begin? Often, users become demotivated if they see a lengthy sign-up process. However, they're more likely to continue to a sign-up process they're already halfway through.
8. No Extra Costs Information
'Extra costs' are often listed as the primary reason for shopping cart abandonment. If your company doesn't charge for shipping (or doesn't above a certain threshold), you should be displaying this boldly on your website. But how boldly? Experiment with where to place this information and how you get the message across.
9. CTA Language
Beyond the size and location of your CTA, it's a good idea to experiment with the phrasing. For example, you might want to test whether "Create Account" or "Sign-up Now" performs better. You can also have some fun with phrasing. For example, you could try "Get the facts" or "Discover the benefits" against the more traditional "Learn more."
10. Images
There's lots of A/B testing potential with images. For example, you could experiment with photos vs. videos on your landing page. In addition, you could see whether product photos perform better with faces in or without. And of course, image size and placement can also be an excellent element to test.
How To Do A/B Testing the Right Way
One common pitfall businesses fall into is assuming they know what already works. For example, you might think, "I won't conduct A/B testing on my landing image because I'm confident that image resonates with visitors". The truth is, there's always value in A/B testing because you can never truly know what works until you test it.
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