Landing pages are some of the most important components in generating sales, or leads and delivering a targeted customer experience. A sales page must convert readers, moving them from the content through to the ‘call to action,’ whether that action is purchasing a product, signing up on an email list, or some other desired behaviour. A/B, also commonly known as ‘split’ testing is one of the easiest ways to determine how well a particular landing page performs.

The Basic Concept behind A/B, Split Testing

In order to utilize A/B (or split) testing, you need to have two different, distinct landing pages for the same product. The content will likely be different, as will the design or layout of each landing page.

The primary landing page, or the original one, will be labelled ‘A’ and is your starting point, or ‘control’ version. The secondary landing page, sometimes referred to as the ‘challenger’ is labelled ‘B.’

Both landing pages are launched and run simultaneously so that the target audience and engagement will be the same.

Understanding the results is relatively straightforward, but by using an A/B, or split, test, you can measure a wide range of factors including:

> Calls to action > Headlines > Sub-headlines > Special offers > Content or copy

This level of testing can help you refine your landing pages to ultimately capture the highest number of visitors who read it.

Benefits to A/B, Split Testing

Some of the most important key benefits to using A/B (split) testing are:

Easy to use: The Storm Insight Customer Experience Management software solution is ideal for A/B split tests. With Storm Insight, you could be running and testing two landing pages in a matter of minutes, rather than hours for some more complicated testing mechanisms.

No need to understand advanced statistics: Mathematics are not everyone’s strong point, and it isn’t required for split testing. The results that are calculated by using a split test are straightforward: one landing page will either perform better than another or not. The page that generates the highest conversion rate will be the one you want to choose moving forward, either as the singular landing page, or to test against another version.

Ease of design: There’s not much that needs to be considered with regard to split testing. You simply determine how many pages you want to test against one another (you could utilize an A-B-C-D split test, for example) and then have the traffic coming to the page split among the test pages. This will provide the rawest and purest results possible.

Ideal for low and high traffic sites: There is no minimal requirement for traffic to the pages in order to use split testing. This makes it ideal for websites or webpreneurs of any size who want to maximize their conversion rates.

The only real drawback to using split testing is that you can only measure one design element at a time. However, the more A/B tests you perform, the more refined the landing page will become. Then you’ll be able to develop a high performing landing page that will generate positive results.