Conversion rate not meeting your expectations? A guide to A/B Testing to skyrocket your conversion rate

June 23, 2022 at 12:00 am
Reading Time: 6 minutes

An underperforming landing page can have a profoundly negative impact on your rate of conversions; leading to an underwhelming rate of sales, subscriptions, or whatever is it your business is offering. If you are looking to get your website convert at a much higher level, read on!

Crafting the perfect landing page or web page that has high conversion is not an easy feat. It entails a lot of trial and error. A/B testing (also known as split testing) or Multivariate Testing is the approaches to follow here. We will focus on A/B testing here.

 

What is A/B Testing?

“A/B testing is simply an experiment where multiple variants of a webpage are presented to a user, and the siphoned data is relayed, detailing which variation performed best given an individual’s conversion objective”. (Crazy Egg)

It’s important to note that not every A/B testing software found online will work the same way for your business. The chances are around 50/50 that your audience could end up doing the exact opposite of what you intended to accomplish by implementing this conversion enhancing tactic.

Taking that into consideration, A/B testing still offers an advantage in regards to increasing conversions. You must always keep in mind, that on an individual level, you have no idea of what will work for your audience until you start testing. It’s a numbers game. The more test you run, the better you understand your audience.

What Leads to Low Conversion Rates?

Before you initiate an A/B test, it is a must that you achieve a comprehensive understanding of the issues plaguing your current landing page(s). Common issues associated with poor performing landing pages include:

  • Unattractive Copy – Crafting copy that will draw in the eyes of prospects with intent is a difficult endeavour. The pathway to success in regard to creating enticing copy involves testing different versions until one yields the result you were hoping to achieve. Marketers who are far from their intended result may be hindering their own success with copy lacking an understanding of their audience, excitement, a clear message, and a sense of urgency.
  • Lack of Clarity – Whatever it is you are offering, it is essential that you communicate exactly that, in a clear and concise manner. With the abundance of websites, offering similar products and services, consumers aren’t bound to your platform to service their wants and needs. If your site visitors can’t understand what it is you are offering, they’ll simply go somewhere else, rather than trying to rack their brain attempting to gain clarity. You have between 5 and 15 seconds to generate a visitor’s interest before they click away. Make sure your landing page is working towards your objective.
  • Poor User Experience – User experience is the most important element, pertaining to key influences that affect your conversion rate. An example of poor user-experience relates to any element embedded within your site that creates friction for a user. This could be slow loading media, glitches, any type of unresponsiveness, difficult site navigation, and so on.
  • Distracting Landing Page Elements – The sole objective of a landing page is to convert site visitors into subscribers and/or customers. Landing pages that consist of elements (i.e., aggressive popups, distracting banners/ads, and multiple CTA’s) that don’t assist in enhancing your conversion rate should be removed and replaced with elements (i.e., explainer videos, testimonials, and CTA) that work towards achieving your goal.

How Does A/B Testing Work?

The steps involved with the A/B testing process include:

  • Identify Problems – The data collected from your A/B test will provide insight into where you should begin optimising your landing page. The ideal place to begin the process of optimisation would be areas where you receive the most traffic, the lowest rate of conversions and the highest rate of drop-offs.
  • Identify Objectives – Your conversion goals should service your sole objective. For example, if you hope to increase the number of user’s who subscribe to your content, you should set goals that help you bring that intention to fruition.
  • Establish a Hypothesis – Once you’ve clearly established your intentions, you should then begin the process of creating a list of ways in which you can improve upon your current landing page. The next step would be prioritising that list by items you deem most impactful.
  • Develop Variations – After your list has been developed, you can begin making changes to your landing page, using an A/B testing software. These changes could include things like the extraction of distracting elements or the inclusion of a clearly stated CTA.
  • Test Landing Page – Once the experiment is up and running, all you have to do is wait for users to visit your site. During the experiment, user’s will be randomly assigned to either the original landing page (control), or the variation, and their interactions will be monitored, and the data will be collected and compared to determine which landing page performed the best.
  • Analyse the Data – Once the experiment concludes, your A/B testing software will analyse the information acquired, and present the data, statistically comparing the performance of both landing pages.

What to Test on Your Landing Page to Increase Conversion Rates 

If you’re interested in A/B testing but are unsure of where to begin and what to test, you can start with:

  • Headlines – The importance of your site’s headline can’t be understated. It is essential that the text you’ve chosen accurately represents the message you intended to convey, and does so in a manner that your audience finds easily digestible. If you are unsure about the quality of your headline, you can alter it; either by changing the phrasing, length of text, or the emotions evoked in your wording.
  • Landing Page Design – Try experimenting with different landing page templates. Your audience may connect with a different design more than the one you are currently using. You’ll never know until you try.
  • Change Background Image – Experiment with different styles of images (i.e., stock photos vs. original photography, or screenshot vs. illustration), to determine which resonates with your audience more.
  • Change CTA Copy – When creating a CTA, ensure that the style of wording used, aligns with your audience. If you are unsure as to what will connect with your audience, try testing out copy with more direct language, against copy with a more creative approach.
  • Change Position of CTA Button – This may not seem like a big deal in regard to the effectiveness of the conversion capabilities of a landing page, but it is. Try raising or lowering the CTA button on the page, and/or shifting the button to the left or right.
  • Adjusting the Number of Fields on an Opt-In Form – Asking for only the most essential information for the purpose of contacting a prospect (as opposed to an exorbitant amount) will increase the odds of successfully converting them. Consider extracting fields that aren’t necessarily vital in the pursuit of your objective.
  • Play with Your Numbers – Test out different versions of how numbers appear on your page. For example, instead of saying, “Make $2000/mo.,” try, “Earn $2k every 30 days!”

What Leadpages Learned From Their Own A/B Test

Skillsets are developed through experience; and the team at Leadpages has a ton of it. They didn’t just learn the secrets to success, pertaining to A/B testing through reading articles, they conducted hundreds of experiments on their own site, and facilitated hundreds of thousands of tests for their customers.

Here are some of the insights they found:

  • 12.44% increase in conversions by simplifying the opt-in form.
  • 39.5% increase in conversions by changing their background image.
  • 28% increase in conversions by deleting a headline from a video squeeze page.
  • 34.43% increase in conversions by exchanging a product image for a digital product.

How Can A/B Testing Improve Your Business?

Here is how A/B Testing can benefit your website business.

  • Increases Conversion Rates : More Leads – A/B testing is the easiest way to help marketers craft a landing page or webpage to convert a higher rate of visitors into engaged leads, engaged accounts and eventually to customers.
  • Reduces Bounce Rates – A/B testing allows marketers to fine-tune their website (i.e., adjusting font sizes and removing distracting banners), so site visitors are compelled to stay on a page long enough to increase the odds of converting them.
  • Improves Content Engagement : More Engaged Accounts – A/B testing allows marketers to create the type of content that entices users to perform the actions businesses want.
  • Reduces Cart Abandonment : Higher eCommerce Sales – A/B testing allows marketers to tweak certain elements of their site to help decrease the rate of cart abandonment during check out. These tweaks could be displaying shipping costs later on in the sales process, or altering the colour of the order confirmation button.

For more information regarding A/B testing software, or, for inquiries pertaining to other digital marketing services, contact the marketing experts at Grow Digitally for a no obligation, zero-risk growth marketing session today.

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