When thinking about optimizing your website, common wisdom says: test it, test it, test it…
Many elements can contribute to a website’s conversion rate… headline, font, buttons, colors, white space… and the list goes on. But which are directly affecting your website?
A/B testing or split testing has been the best way to fine tune your marketing efforts and determine which elements of your website are working… and which elements are not. Usually, the performance of two pages is compared with A being the control and B the page going up against the control. A/B testing has proven to be valuable to marketers as it provides concrete evidence regarding conversions, and is not based on someone’s opinion regarding what will work.
Google Analytics Experiment Optionis one of the available google apps specifically designed to help you optimize your website and can take split testing to a new level.
Up to five variations of a page can be tested. When setting up the experiment, you can specify the percentage of traffic each page is to receive. It’s important that you run the test long enough for meaningful statistical data to be received. Tests can be run for up to 3 months, so even websites with low traffic volume can still participate in testing their site.
There are many different elements you could test on your website. With Google’s Experiement Option, the choice regarding what you test is up to you. Usually, you will want to test a big change – small changes often don’t result in meaningful data.
The biggest advantage to being able to test multiple pages simultaneously is that you aren’t forced to make a conclusion based on incomplete data. With straight A/B testing, if more than one change is made on a page and it is tested, it’s difficult to know which element contributed to the conversion increase. This Google App for business eliminates this guesswork.
Setting up the test will require code be added to your original page. You can add this code yourself, or rely on your webmaster or google added value reseller to do this for you.
Google Analytics measures the performance of each page and provides valuable feedback for optimizing your website. For more information on this Google business tool or other Google business tools available, please contact us.