How To Optimize Your Website With A/B Testing (Tools + Best Practices)
An essential part of the overall Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) process is using A/B testing to obtain qualitative and quantitative information about your users.
You can utilize this data to learn more about how users interact with your website and how they feel about new features, updated areas, etc.
You’re probably missing out on many possible company revenues if you’re not A/B testing your website.
In this post, we’ll help you find the top A/B testing tools currently on the market.
A/B testing, often known as split testing, is a randomized experimentation method in which two or more versions of a variable, such as a web page, a page element, etc. Each version is given to various groups of website users at the same time to identify which version has the most impact and drives business KPIs.
Essentially, A/B testing removes all guesswork from website optimization and allows experienced optimizers to make data-driven judgments. In A/B testing, A stands for ‘control,’ or the original testing variable. In contrast, B denotes a ‘variation,’ or a new version of the original testing variable.
The ‘winner’ is the version that improves your business metric(s). Implementing the adjustments from this winning variant on your tested page(s) / element(s) will help improve your website and enhance company ROI.
Why Should You Consider A/B Testing?
- Solve visitor pain points
- Get better ROI from existing traffic
- Reduce bounce rate
- Make low-risk modifications
- Achieve statistically significant improvements
- Redesign website to increase future business gains
Top A/B Testing Software
1.
Crazyegg is a website optimization tool for small businesses, eCommerce enterprises, digital agencies, and educational institutions that helps them analyze visitor behavior across email and ad campaigns. This tool enables teams to study consumers’ journeys, identify diverse audience segments present across web pages, and detect issues like confusing navigation and form glitches. Administrators can use the A/B testing tool to set up specific goals for testing web pages.
Pricing: Paid
Pricing page: https://www.crazyegg.com/pricing
2.
Vwo assists companies with the creation, deployment, and management of custom tests for websites and mobile/web applications. Through a centralized interface, businesses can build A/B, split, and multivariate tests, conduct surveys, and monitor customer experience, revenue, conversion rate, and other parameters. The visual editor in Vwo allows testers to change headlines, CTAs, images, fonts, background color, layouts, and other elements, as well as create several versions of a webpage and resize, drag, and hide options.
Pricing: Paid
Pricing page: https://vwo.com/pricing/
3.
UserTesting is a customer experience tool that assists organizations in creating tests to gather feedback on new products and marketing campaigns. Professionals can use a drag-and-drop interface to create custom tests, add numerous questions/tasks, and streamline follow-up processes using one-on-one video interviews. Enterprises can use the UserTesting dashboard to measure audience experience using MCQs or rating scales, as well as export performance reports in Excel format.
Pricing: Paid
Pricing page: https://www.usertesting.com/plans
4.
UsabilityHub is a user testing and research platform that enables organizations to conduct tests and gather user feedback in order to evaluate the performance of their websites or applications. Professionals can utilize the dashboard to analyze project details and create new tests, which include information such as the test name, language, and allowed devices. Developers may use UsabilityHub to design customizable surveys, add/update multiple questions, and filter replies based on a variety of criteria.
5.
Userlytics is a cutting-edge user testing tool that lets you execute user experience tests on any digital asset (websites, apps, prototypes, competitor assets, and more) and on any device. Userlytics is one of the only user testing solutions that record the participant’s camera, audio, and screen while also allowing an infinite number of annotations, highlight reels, users/admins, testers per session, and concurrent studies.
Pricing: Paid
Pricing page: https://www.userlytics.com/prices-plans
6.
Optimizely is a cloud-based marketing system that assists product teams in developing, testing, and deploying customer-centric digital experiences. Businesses use this experimental platform to make data-driven decisions and implement personalized pages on their websites, mobile apps, and connected devices. The main capabilities available include a visual editor, platform security/compliance, and customizable experiments such as multi-page, A/B testing, and multivariate. It has a statistics engine that enables users to conduct experiments with statistical rigor and make business decisions based on real-time outcomes compared to pre-set goals metrics.
Pricing: Paid
Pricing page: https://www.optimizely.com/plans/
7.
AB Tasty is an all-in-one conversion optimization platform that helps you increase conversions on your website, apps, and mobile sites. It allows for content customization and concept validation, allowing organizations to achieve their objectives more effectively and efficiently. It enables users to rapidly and easily conduct A/B tests to determine what works best, allowing them to improve user experience and increase ROI. AB Tasty includes a graphic editor, which allows marketing teams to directly tweak their site’s pages and generate different versions to test.
Pricing: Paid
Pricing page: https://www.abtasty.com/pricing/
8.
Convert.com is a platform that allows companies to do A/B testing, multipage, and multivariate testing to make data-driven decisions. It empowers businesses to track engagement, clicks, conversions, sign-ups, and more. It enables its users to make behavioral targeting, custom tag and device targeting, page element Targeting, and cookie targeting. Convert.com’s key features include A/B testing, split testing, visual editor, optimization of product pages by category, extensive reporting and solid metrics, advanced targeting, personalization, and more.
Pricing: Paid
Pricing page: https://www.convert.com/pricing/
How Do A/B Testing Tools Work?
Each A/B testing tool relies on a code snippet to determine which version of a web page is shown to a visitor. Half see “version A” and half see “version B” in the most basic form.
The code may be deployed either server-side or client-side, although most of it is done client-side using Javascript and a testing tool.
A/B tools function identically: some visitors view version A, while others see version B. Here’s how the procedure works:
- You include a piece of Javascript code (similar to Google Analytics) in your website’s header for the platform you’re using.
- You specify the URL where the A/B test will be executed. This instructs the tool where to place cookies on visitors who have opted in to your trial.
- After entering the URL, you create the experiment variant. This is where you would add/remove/move items from your original design (control).
- Once you’ve established the variation, you may select the objectives you wish to track. What KPI will you use to determine if your new version was a success?
- After that, when you launch the campaign, the tool will start redirecting visitors to variation B (or others if you’ve elected to perform a multivariate test).
- Depending on the version selected by the visitor, the testing tool’s Javascript code modifies the web page code before it is rendered in the visitor’s browser.
- Finally, the testing tool’s cookie monitors the visitor’s version and whether they perform particular activities that are counted against the test goal.
- From this point forward, you must wait for your test to provide enough results to declare an objective winning variation.
The ultimate objective of these A/B testing is to perform several subsequent tests based on the prior experiment’s learnings and utilize those insights to create incremental modifications to the pages being tested.
What Are Best Practices With A/B Testing?
A/B testing does not have a one-size-fits-all solution. It all comes down to your industry, customers, and the media you’re testing (e.g., a website).
That being said, here are some recommendations:
- What should be tested: Determine exactly what you want to test. Don’t just test “your homepage.” Determine if you’re going to test the headline, picture, CTA, banner, logo, or all of the above. Make your request as precise as possible.
- Testing procedure: Choose how you will determine a winner once you’ve determined what you want to test. Is it the number of clicks on your CTA? Who has the most page views? What is the lowest bounce rate?
- Sample size: You must select the appropriate sample size. If it is too little, it will be statistically insignificant. If it is too vast, you may become overburdened with data (not always a bad thing). To calculate your sample size, you can use an A/B Calculator.
- Select a platform: Create two websites and set up proxies to serve website A to half of your sample and website B to the other half, which will require a lot of effort. It is considerably easier to develop competitive web pages using a program like the ones described above.
- Create your page: Once you’ve completed all the preceding steps, design your page and test it!
Wrap Up
Even though each of these platforms has its own merits, the most excellent option will be determined by your requirements.
After reading this, you should be able to make an educated decision, and we hope that we’ve helped.
Let us know if there are any more A/B testing programs you believe should be included in this list.