If you’re online at least semi-regularly, I’m sure you’ll have heard the term ‘split testing’ before.
If the term is completely unfamiliar to you, then let me explain.
Split testing is a method used to test different parts of a website such as the website’s design, click-through rate (CTR), navigation, placement of ads and other such things.
There are two different types of split testing, which are A/B testing and multi-variable testing.
A/B Testing is where two different versions of the same webpage are tested against each other to see which one does better. Analysis is done of both pages on things like total impressions, user activity, CTR, total time spent on each page, and so on. The page that does better will be used.
Multi-variable testing involves changing several variables simultaneously and tracking all the changes and their results. Lots of different factors will be considered at the same time.
Doesn’t have to be just webpages, things like graphics, headlines, buttons and other page aspects can be split tested too.
So yeah, basically that’s what split testing means. And it’s actually pretty important.
When it comes to internet marketing, most of it involves testing and learning, and testing and learning, and testing more and learning more.
Why You Need to Split Test
1. Improve your conversions
Split testing can help you understand the factors related to your conversions.
If you’re doing well, you should want to know why and how so that you can replicate your success in future projects.
If your page isn’t converting well, you still need to know why, so you can adjust and tweak and make changes accordingly so that your page does better.
Barack Obama used split testing while doing his online campaign. He learned that he got 18.6% more sign ups when he used ‘Learn More’ buttons instead of the standard ‘Sign Up’ or ‘Join Us’ buttons.
2. Improve the amount of traffic to your website
The same way that split testing can get you more data on your website conversions, it can help you get more traffic to your website.
Split testing can help you learn more about the visitors to your website, and what they like or don’t like.
You can test different versions of the same page (flash, HTML, etc). See which one gets you more visitors, or traffic.
3. Lessen Bounce Rates
Bounce rates refer to the number of visitors to your page who visit your page and then ‘bounce’, or leave the website instead of continuing to your website or sales funnel.
Obviously, we want to lessen these, we want to know why our page isn’t converting.
Split testing can provide us with data we need to understand bounce rates and why they’re happening.
Then we can take steps to fix things and lower our bounce rates.
4. Small changes can be significant
One internet marketer recently posted on his blog about how they found out through A/B testing that the reason their website wasn’t doing well was because of social proof.
Social proof is usually considered a good thing, isn’t it? How could it be lowering their CTR instead of improving it?
But A/B testing results showed that once they lowered the numbers for their social proof, their CTR improved.
In another example, other online marketers found out that for their page, ‘Add to Cart’ buttons converted better than ‘Buy Now’ buttons.
You can’t argue with something that’s been tested and proven.
Small things can mean a world of difference when it comes to whether or not your page visitors end up doing what you want them to do. And through split testing, you can find out what changes you need to make.
How to start split testing
You can find tools online. For example, Google has a free split testing tool. You can use others if you prefer.
They shouldn’t be difficult to figure out how to use. Most are quite user-friendly.
You can focus on simple variations, split testing doesn’t have to be complicated.
But split testing can and will make a difference in your success rate as an online marketer. So if you haven’t done it before or are putting it off for some reason, quit it.
