Intuitions today do not work in the favour of digital marketers as much as the analytics while optimising websites for best possible conversions. A/B testing helps here because you get to test your current design against the landing page, newsletters or ads, letting you analyse quantifiable data which one has the potential to perform best for the goals (sales, bounce rate or conversion rate, etc.) you have set. You get the insights of clients and customers you can work on for improved business.
Here are 6 of the easiest A/B Tests to increase conversions:
Free Trials
Some marketers take it as common sense, while others want some solid proof to implement Free Trial as a part of marketing their product. Some even think that by giving free trail as an option, they are involuntarily discouraging their potential customers from buying that product. GetResponse, an email marketing platform, took up the matter and put up two pages: one only with “Buy Now” option and the other with “Free Trial”to compete with the“Buy Now”. Results: Number of free accounts increased by 158% with no negative impact on the paid accounts.
Subject Lines
Adopt a particular way to test subject lines, like testing spelled out numbers against numerical numbers on different offers, capital versus non-capital letters, or just changing the way text is written. For example while promoting a product through discounts, if a company puts a deadline in the subject line, the performance of the subject line increases manifolds. Just apply the changes and test. And work to get to your end of results.
Credit Card vs. No credit Card
Some websites make it compulsory for a visitor to enter their credit card details for free trial which could depend on the kind of customers they are targeting. Still, a customer engagement management platform, Totango tested for what works better for them with 10000 visitors sent to one page with free trial requiring credit card details and rest 10000 to the other page that did not require anything in return. Results: The page without any demand led to increasing signups by 500%, and paid accounts by 50%. Your audience might be different than that of Totango, so work accordingly.
Varying Offers
Offers can be of numerous types, enticing one set of customers more than the others, which is where A/B testing can help you to determine what offers entice your audience more. Offers could be percentage off, time sensitive discounts, dollar amount off, discount on specific products,free shipping, or a flash sale. Put forth as many as three to four different offers and test each of them against the others. However, all the while never let your core value proposition slip from perspective.
Call-To-Action (CTA)
Your Content and Subject line are only as effective as your Call-To-Action even when you put your heart, soul and research to create the former two. To say the CTA is the most important part of your email would still be an understatement if you are not optimizing it. FriendBuy, a company tested two variants of their then existing CTA because of its dismal performance, just 1.44% as click-through-rate. The two variants yielded 71% and 211% improvement respectively over the original CTR.
To get great results make your CTA as simple and as clear as you canto encourage and make your visitor click on it.
Removing Fields from Web Forms
As a thumb rule, web forms should be as short as possible to not scare away the potential customer with too many questions. You may want to collect all the info of your customer but short web forms help in long run to boost sales conversion. However, there could be instances where having more form fields improves conversion rate. Consider not asking billing zip code along with credit card details when it can make customer suspect of internet fraud when there’s none.The same may go for asking shipping address in the same page where you took credit card details while selling a tangible product.
Just keep the crucial elements together in the forms and don’t make the visitor feel pressured to fill all the details he thinks unnecessary.
Bottom line
You need to continuously work on what works for you while planning A/B test to improve conversions and not just try to copy those with a particular success story, as your goals, product, audience, etc. could be completely different from theirs.
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