Don’t be just another business that creates multiple landing pages and then forgets all about them.
Don’t make assumptions regarding what will convert and what won’t.
You can go very wrong about this.
That’s where A/B testing can help. An A/B test shows which version of a landing page can result in better clicks, higher conversions and way lower conversion rates.
It also opens up opportunities for refining the landing page by conducting more tests.
This is a critical step to ensure that your landing pages actually convert.
What Is A/B Testing?
A/B testing compares to versions of the same page or the same content. There’s one time that’s changed and the new version is compared against the original to see which one shows better conversions. Unbounce for instance has a large number of tools that can help you automate a/b testing.
When a/b testing landing pages, changing an image or changing a headline and comparing it with another page to see which one got more conversions is how you find out if your variations worked or not.
A/b testing landing pages can add to revenue. Test continually to understand what the most ideal version is.
Reasons to A/B test your Landing Pages
A/b testing landing pages sounds like and often is plenty of work. And maybe that’s why most busy business bees don’t look back once they have created a landing page. However, if you use testing and learning tools, finding out what’s wrong with a landing page is going to be quite easy.
You’re going to get lots of advantages working with these smart tools
The section will cover why you need to test your landing pages and the potential doing so holds out for you.
1. You want higher conversion rates
Conversion rates might be thought of as the major reason why you may want to test landing pages. If you’re not getting enough conversions, you probably need to alter your call to action, change your message, work on your copy and use better images.
Marketers create a product and sell it because they know their audience well. That doesn’t however imply that you know everything about your audience, especially how they behave on your site. You might not have researched their behavior to understand how they act on your site. Which calls to action and snippets of text they find to be most actionable is one such thing. The truth is despite having a great product, poor choice of call-to-action text, dizzying color choices, and other factors may result in poor conversions.
The research that you do must complement an audience’s on-site behavior as well.
The tiny differences can make a major impact on conversion rates.
You should ideally a/b test landing pages to see why visitors don’t convert. First, start with one element and then see if you can replicate the results across the board.
A/B tests can increase your sales
What we wish to achieve with landing pages is an increase in conversions. A/b tests on landing pages can do a lot of good. They increase sales. When you craft the best possible copy it has a direct impact on your sales. It’s the perfect creative and resonates very well with your target audience well.
A tweak will improve the number of visitors on your landing page and improve bottom line. Instead of waiting for someone to reach out to you five times or six times perhaps you will reduce the number of touchpoints required.
Learn more about visitors
You can read up all you want around your potential customers but none of that is going to make a big difference until and unless you know how your customers actually behave. You only learn this after collecting data points on your audience.
When you learn about visitors you need somewhere to get data on them.
With a/b testing, you get information on elements that are getting clicked. Sometimes altering just one word can result in big changes to your conversion rates.
Generate higher levels of engagement
Popular opinion might lead to believe that landing pages are just to get people to click on your call to action. You want people to do that in addition you want your message to reach other places.
If you want to spread your message well you need a good landing page that works for you.
A landing page can offer multiple opportunities to visitors. There can be multiple call to action: one for following your brand on social media, checking your blog, and returning later. You must not kill these opportunities on your landing page.
Landing page’s a/b tests help craft the imagery and surrounding text that can resonate well with visitors.
What to A/B Test on Landing Pages
Landing page a/b testing can be slow. I guess that’s what frustrates people most about a/b testing. You test just one variable at a time. However, you can always switch up other elements and run multiple tests at the same time.
Why you want to test one element at a time is to reveal clues to understanding why one element might have converted better than the other one.
If you rather test two elements at once say variant 1 and variant 2 you won’t know changing which of the elements resulted in higher conversions. You may have to do the test again. In this case as before you’re flying blind.
Changing just one element at a time means you know which of the changes contributed to an increase in conversions.
Here are the things you should consider testing:
The layout
A landing page’s layout corroborates to how the different elements are arranged on the screen.
Test out the placement of your copy. Test the position of your main image and test the positioning in general. These small changes can add up to big wins for conversions.
The copy can be long or short. It can have a number of benefits. Add bullets or more images.
The offer
On a landing page, the key is the offer. The offer is what you give your audience in exchange for their email address or an action you want from them.
Want people to sign up to your email list? Offer them a lead magnet. Want them to buy an online course and offer a discount?
When you change the offer that tells a lot about the audience’s desires. If you tweak your offer you will observe the landing page conversion rates going up or down depending on what the preference of the person is.
Test different offers at different times. Figure out what your audience wants most.
The headline and the rest of the copy
Copy is still kind of a big deal in a world obsessed with images, visuals, and videos. It can easily be one of the most important elements to a/b test on your landing page. The copy explains what the offer is, and gives information about the company. It encourages people to engage with the site further.
A/b test the headline used on the landing page. It should be engaging and directed at the target customer.
Change the words used and replace boring verbs with more exciting ones.
Experiment more with words or phrases. Such an interesting copy can do a lot to overcome objections.
The call to action
The call to action is your shot at convincing people to click ahead. It’s your chance to win over the visitor and get him to convert with your offer.
- Test the background and font colors.
- Test the font style and size
- Test the CTA copy.
These are all elements and iterations to keep testing.
Product descriptions
When you’re selling a product on your landing page, the product description needs to be apt.
Write a description for the first variant. Then tweak it a little. Consider the variation and the original and see which one results in more traffic back to your site and conversions.
Experiment with other phrases and words. Pinpoint the problem that can be solved and the goals that can be reached.
Drill down further to get the landing page to resonate with people’s problems.
Images and videos
Here’s another facto. You need images and videos on landing pages. The landing pages work even without images or videos but some are great with minimal copy.
Once the landing pages are stripped of images and videos you can test this variant with the existing version. Add or remove accordingly.
Understand the A/B Testing Process for Landing Pages
Now that we are clear on what to test, The next stage is how to test. The a/b testing for landing pages isn’t complex.
A/B Testing x Split Testing
A/b testing isn’t the same as conducting a split test. In a split test, two completely different versions of a landing page are compared to see which converts better.
No problem with split testing but split testing is used to establish the basic framework to operate your site on.
A/B Testing Examples of Landing Pages
Let’s say on a landing page you offer a 10% discount. On another landing page, you enter examples of past work, testimonials, and descriptions of USP and CTA.
You need to test which one converts better.
You might want to test which examples you want to showcase. Test with different examples in the lead and control.
Some of these works may resonate with your audience. Some may not.
Next, test the headline. Add in catchy phrases or use personalization. Make it more appealing and test.
How to A/B Test Landing Pages in 6 Steps
Here’s the next step to breakdown landing pages:
1. Understand user behavior to decide what you should test first
Understanding how people coming to your site behave on the site is key to understanding what you need to a/b test.
You need a tool to gather insights into how they are behaving on the site and use the personalized data to formulate your landing pages.
See which links get most clicks. Which is the scroll depth. Percentage of visitors engaging with forms on the site.
You need the data before you start a/b testing landing pages.
Growing brand and conversions requires great execution and this is what we are going to get now.
2. Define the “A” version
Version a or version 1 of the landing page is the current version of the landing page on your site. Creating a version b requires you to change one element of this page. This is less time intensive and can often give you great results.
When building a new site you may not have existing landing pages. But you can use click map and heatmap data to figure out a landing page version that converts.
4. Choose a good A/B testing tool
Tools make a big difference with landing pages. There are tons of choices like Unbounce that can help you a/b test and run the data with hundreds of variants. Plus their landing pages are all optimized for conversions.
Find out how long you should run the A/B tests
With a tool like Unbounce, it also becomes easy to understand how long you should run a test to get statistically significant results.
If one person visits each variation you won’t be able to make significant choices. You need good traffic.
You can also test each of your pages on the site like the homepage, the product pages and more.
Each test is accessible with results in the CrazyEgg dashboard for you to access.