The Wonders of A/B Testing

In a recent webinar conducted by  who is the founder of Clever Zebo and who has helped countless start ups gain reputation and opportunity to find their target prospects, he discussed about the world of A/B testing. Some of us, especially starters, will scratch our heads and ask; What is A/B testing and how huge is its impact in the growth of your business – my business – our business?

A/B Testing: A Simplified Definition

Do you remember your younger school days when you used to work with your favorite Science teacher in running science experiments? She would ask you to grow seeds in two separate cans. One can is filled with soil and the other one is filled with sand. Then you would wait to see which one would grow better. But even before you get results, you would create a hypothesis – an educated guess about your experiment. You will then get to see  if your hypothesis was correct or not. This is basically what A/B testing is all about, but instead of playing with seedlings; we are working with the web design elements.

A/B testing is a very simple yet powerful way to test the outcome of your web design changes (whether small or big). It is also a great way to have a systematic means of gauging results from two separate web designs or element changes.

A/B testing is converting “what we think” into facts. It will help us to avoid instant conclusions on what really works for our website. Have you ever experienced getting overly optimistic about a certain marketing campaign only to have it end up as a failure? This is where A/B testing can be very beneficial. It will help us make the right decisions before we pool our energy, resources, and time in a marketing stunt.

Taking Advantage of Quantitative Data

A/B testing does not allow users to predict the outcome of their campaign or web design change. It only provides qualitative MEASURABLE data for interpretation. We take insight from the number of downloads, clicks, visits, bounce rate, purchases, and other metrics and specifics that define your CONVERSION GOALS. A/B testing is turning your hunches into facts. It is a system that will enable you to drop the line, “this MIGHT work” to “this ACTUALLY works”.

A Long Journey worth Taking

A/B testing software” href=”https://www.convert.com”>A/B testing can be frustrating at times. Even Google has a reputation for doing tests only to provide limited results that really mattered. In 2009, they conducted over 12,000 randomized testing / experiments with only 10 % that lead to their business changes. Imagine how only 120 tests out of those 12.000 experiments come out as worth trying. But Google is known as one of the biggest companies in the world because of a reason.  It’s because they have a great understanding of their consumers and their product. They know their users very well and they know their needs. They know the kind of design element people will instantly respond to.

Think of your business and think of what impact A/B Testing can have on what you are trying to do. What if you had tested the most important design elements of your website? What if you tested what email campaign works? Maybe, just maybe, you wouldn’t be wasting as much time chasing the wind. If you would like to know more about A/B testing, click here and watch this webinar conducted by Josh Krafchin.