A/B Testing Overview

You can find the following topics on this page:

• What is A/B Testing?

• Why should you use A/B Testing?

• What can you test?

• A/B Testing process

• What makes RMC A/B Testing different?

What is A/B Testing? 

A/B Testing compares two or more versions of your website content to see which best lifts your conversions, sales, or other success metrics you identify. Use A/B Testing to compare changes to your page against your original page design to determine which experience produces the best results with your target audience. Performing A/B testing is particularly useful when you have a clear hypothesis of ways to improve your conversion goal with alternative content delivery.

Why should you use A/B Testing? 

Well-planned A/B tests with a clear hypothesis and accurate results can make a considerable difference in the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. Narrowing down the most effective elements of a page layout, promotion or targeted action, and then combining them, can obviously make your marketing efforts much more profitable and successful.

For instance, A/B Testing allows you to make the most out of your existing website traffic. While the cost of acquiring paid traffic can be considerably high, the cost of increasing your conversion funnel with testing and optimisation is minimal. The ROI of A/B Testing can be quite high, as even small changes on a landing page or website can result in significant increases in leads generated, conversions and revenue.

What can you test? 

• Test your website layout, content and design.

The layout of a site has a huge impact on how likely a shopper is to convert. Shoppers decide whether they want to stay on a site within seconds. An easy to navigate landing page is important to drive conversions. Product and checkout pages are equally important, as more shoppers drop off at every stage of the purchase funnel.

RMC Target lets you create unlimited variations of content directly on a webpage. You can modify images, text, layout, and so on. You can move components around the webpage, hide them, add new ones, or change visual components such as colour, text and design. Any changes or modifications you make on your website can be tested and evaluated enabling you to implement the right changes to increase engagement and maximise overall site conversions.

• Test your personalised experiences (Targeting Actions) you deliver to your audiences.

RMC Target allows you to test the Targeting Actions you deliver to your audiences. Targeting Actions allows you to deliver personalised experiences (offers, messages and content) to different audiences. But sometimes you're not sure what type of experience will make the biggest impact for a particular group of visitors. Use A/B testing to test multiple variations of your targeting actions for a single audience. Visitors who meet the Targeting Rules will be randomly grouped to see the different versions of your Targeted Action. RMC allows you to choose a percentage of your targeted audience (control group), who will not see the changes being tested, giving you a point of reference by which to judge your conversion goals (improvement rate).

A/B testing process 

The correct way to run an A/B testing is to follow a process. The following is an A/B testing guideline you can use to start running your tests:

1. Study your website data: Your analytics tool will help you find the problem areas in your conversion funnel. Look for pages with high drop-off rates or low conversion rates that can be improved.
   
   
2. Identify conversion goals: Conversion goals are the metrics that you will be using to determine whether or not the variation is more successful than the original version. RMC allows you to define your own conversion goals. Depending on your action, a goal can be anything from purchases to clicking a link and newsletter subscriptions.
   
   
3. Generate hypothesis: Once you have identified areas of improvement and a goal, you can begin building a hypothesis aimed at increasing conversions. 
   
   
4. Create variations: Use targeting actions to make the desired changes to an element of your website or to build an experience. Once you have created a targeting action, create different variations of it to test against the original. This might be changing the colour of a button, hiding page elements, or displaying a popup with a special offer.
   
   
5. Select your target audience: Add Targeting Rules to run the test only on visitors that match the specific segment criteria you are specifically targeting, rather than to all visitors to your site. 
   
   
6. Run your testing campaign: Launch your testing campaign and wait for your visitors to participate. Visitors will be randomly appointed to either the control group or a variation of your targeted action. Each visitor interaction is counted and measured to determine how different variations perform.
   
   
7. Analyse test data: Analyse your A/B test results, and see which variation delivered the highest conversions and whether there is a statistically significant difference.
   
   
8. Implement winner: If your test result indicates that one of the changes significantly improved conversion, declare the variant as the winner and go ahead with its implementation. If the test remains inconclusive, either allocate more time or go back to step 3 and rework your hypothesis.

What makes RMC A/B Testing different? 

Versatile testing capabilities 

 RMC's versatile testing capabilities allow you to analyse and optimise overall visitors' experience of each personalisation you make to your site. Personalised content, popups, offers, and design, wherever your personalised changes appear, they can be included in a test.

Audience based testing 

The ability to test the effects of versions on limited customer customer segments, rather than all visitors to your site, saves you time by eliminating irrelevant data, and allows you to achieve greater precision by showing the action to customers who match the segment that you intended to market to. All other website visitors will continue to see the original version of your site, in return minimising any lost conversions due to the testing.

Control group selector 

RMC's control group selector allows you to choose a percentage of your audience who will not see the changes being tested, giving you a point of reference by which to judge your key performance indicators.

Multiple page testing 

You have the ability to test an action across multiple pages. This means that an action can be tied to many pages on your site(s), but tested as a single variable.

Data driven optimisation

RMC allows you to see the performance of each version based on the custom conversion metric you have selected. You can see the data on changes you have made in real-time, easily point out the underperforming actions and decide which actions to implement based on test results.

Parent Topic: A/B Testing