Split testing.

Understanding what works best - simple!

People’s attention span on the web has been decreasing ever since Google arrived and changed the rules of the game. Now with millions of results available for any topic imaginable, the window to grab a visitor’s attention has decreased significantly. Picture yourself browsing the web, do you go out of your way to read the text, look at the graphics, and try to thoroughly understand what the page is about? The answer is most likely to be a straight ‘no’. With bombardment of information all around, we have become spoilt for choice, not paying enough attention to what a web page wants to tell us.

We make snap decisions on whether to engage with a website based on whatever we can make out in the first few (milli)seconds. Responsibility for making a good first impression lies with the designers and yourself. Given that the window of opportunity to persuade a visitor is really small, most designs do a sub-optimal job because the designer in you thinks in terms of aesthetics. However most websites do not exist to impress visitors, indeed your website exists to make sales.

A/B or Multivariate?

Adopting our ‘Conversion Search’ methodology we will understand how to fine tune your website to generate more sales in a scientific manner, using A/B split and multivariate testing:

• A/B Split Testing – In A/B testing (also known as split testing), you vary only one element on the page at a time. The element may be any part of the web page critical to conversions (e.g. button colour, size, ad copy headline). Contrast this to multivariate testing, where multiple different elements are tested at a time. However A/B tests are simply, easy to implement and can deliver excellent results.
• Multivariate Testing – in multivariate testing, you identify different sections/factors on a page which affect the conversion rate. Different variations of those factors are created, which are then combined to give rise to multiple different versions of the website. Multivariate test take more time than A/B tests to show results but are likely to produce better results.

Through adopting a structured approach to testing we can assess website performance at page level and create a conversion focussed site that continuously delivers success. We know this works, having created conversion optimisation plans for our clients, we have improved the hit rate of pages and delivered millions in more sales.