Monitor Your Content's Performance with A/B Testing

Small changes have a big impact. Simple tests can help determine which elements perform better.

A tried and true method to analyze the performance of various aspects of your website, A/B testing is critical in any successful marketing strategy. This simple form of testing is easy to set up and inexpensive. A/B testing determines the benefit or drawback of changes made to a particular asset. 

Almost any type of content can be tested — think landing pages, ad copy, emails, and more. When setting up A/B tests, it’s important to keep things simple. It can be tempting to make multiple changes to your content, but this defeats the purpose of a true A/B variable test.

Setting Up an A/B Test

To set your A/B test up properly, you will need to run two versions of the element you are testing, with one version being a control and the other having only one adjustment made. This ensures the difference in performance is attributed to only that specific variable.

Running the assets at the same time is crucial — this eliminates the potential for differences in market behavior from one time period to another. With a proper A/B test, the same targeting settings should be used so that each version receives 50% of the total traffic.

Depending on the amount of traffic your content receives, it may be necessary to run a test longer than expected in order to achieve data significant enough that you can interpret. This is important so that you really can determine which elements are truly performing better. Some elements may not be different enough to create a significant difference, so it may be necessary to make another change.  

Working A/B Testing Into Your Digital Marketing Strategy

There are a lot of industry articles which outline some performance goals, but with the amount of factors that can affect data, you are your own best benchmark! When researching how your content should be performing, use the internet as a guideline, but be sure to focus on using your own performance data. Measuring your historical data against new results is only going to make your content stronger.

A simple and cost-effective method to raising the bar on your own content, A/B testing helps determine the best combination of copy, creative, and calls-to-action specific to your market and audience. Use A/B testing to ensure your highest-performing content is always in use.