A/B testing 101: How Small Changes Can Increase Leads

This post comes to us from the WebsiteBox blog:

Websites are a great marketing tool. This fact is well established in the real estate community. However, one of the most underrated and neglected web marketing strategies is A/B testing. Consider this have you ever wondered if minor changes to the content or layout of a website could actually increase the amount of visitors that contact you? Now there is a way to find out if these minor changes actually do make a difference in the amount of leads your website generates. It is A/B testing.

A/B testing may sound like a very technical term. However, it is a very simple concept. It is a way of testing a marketing campaign by having two different versions of a web page compete with each other to see which one is more effective. For example, if you want to see whether "ask me about a listing" will get more inquiries than "contact me for more info," you could run an A/B test with both, measure which one gets you more inquiries via Google Analytics and voila! You will know what tagline you should include in the link to your inquiry form.

It is important to remember that in A/B testing you always want to test which changes increase a particular action. It is not enough to test two different pages against each other to see which one gets the most critical acclaim, but rather you need to focus on the purpose of the page you are testing. What do you want your visitors to do after they visit that page? Once you answer that question, you will be prepared to set up your A/B test.

Let's look at a hypothetical example. The goal of this page is to get visitors to request a free home evaluation. However there are plenty of individuals who might let the page load and not sign up for one. How can the site get more individuals to fill out the required details and begin the process of getting their home evaluated?

Maybe there needs to be less words. Instead of having two paragraphs of content, have three sentences that communicate the main benefit of getting a free home evaluation. Maybe there should be no content at all because the page name, "Get a Free Home Evaluation," is quite self explanatory.

Maybe the IDX search gadget on the side is distracting and the page layout needs to be changed so that the search gadget appears at the bottom of the page as opposed to the side. The colour grey may not be the most enticing color for a call to action and green might be a better choice for a colour that encourages visitors to fill out the form and receive a free home evaluation. You get the idea.

Once you have decided what page you are going to test and what the goal of the page is, you can set up the A/B test using Google Analytics experiments. For more information on creating an experiment in Google Analytics, click here.

This is only an introduction to A/B testing. Look for A/B Testing 102 later this week!

To view the original article, visit the WebsiteBox blog.