Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Testing. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Testing. Afficher tous les articles

samedi 12 novembre 2016

A/B Testing: The Top Five Things to Test



alt="A/B Testing: The Top Five Things to Test" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/default-image-500x308_c.jpg" />

Website usability and conversion testing is one of the easiest ways to improve the profitability of a site yet it’s often overlooked as many of us get too hung-up on driving the largest amount of traffic possible to our sites. Yet what’s the use of traffic if it doesn’t convert, after all for most us achieving conversions (be that sales, banner clicks, newsletter sign-ups, enquiry forms or affiliate product sales) is what pays the bills. A/B testing is one of the simplest ways to increase your conversion rate, this article looks at 5 of the top elements to test, if you need a generic overview of how this technique works there’s more here in this guide from href="http://www.maxymiser.com/resources/ab-testing" target="_blank">A/B testing software provider Maxymiser and you can make use of href="http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer" target="_blank">Google website optimizer to A/B test for free.

Marketers know that in an A/B test, just one element is changed for the duration of the test to achieve clean results against the control piece. If you change too many elements are once, you’re either straying into multivariate testing or you’re muddying the waters so much you won’t be able to get a clean result.  Yet if you can only change one element, which element do you choose to get to the most profitable results quickly?

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.com/images/2011/1027-1.jpg" alt="A/B Testing Guides" />
(Courtesy of Flickr User: href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mil8/2164167813/sizes/z/in/photostream/" target="_blank">mil8)

The Top Five Items to Change and Assess in an A/B Test

1. Creative

The creative element refers to the graphic design or layout of the piece. It may be as simple as changing the color (green to orange) or the font (Verdana to Times New Roman.) You can try changing one aspect of the overall appearance of the piece or the entire design.

2. Headlines

Headlines are the most important aspect of the copy, and testing several headlines often yields a quick bump in response and conversion rates. Try testing a question (How Happy Are You With Your Bank?), a benefit statement (Better Banking for Less – New Lower Monthly Fees) or a provocative statement (Most Banks Are Blah).

3. Call to Action

The call to action is the statement near the response mechanism that directly asks for the lead, sale or action step you want customers to take. Try tweaking the wording in one test, the placement in another. Sometimes the call to action is obscured by the graphic design or the wording is weak. A simple change has the potential to boost response rates with minimal changes to the overall piece. However, you won’t know until you test it!

4. Timing

Timing is often an overlooked aspect of  A/B testing, but it can have a surprising impact on response rates. If you typically post to your blog in the morning, test the results of morning versus evening posts (there are automated features that let you write posts in advance and schedule the timing). If you typically send email marketing out on the first of the month, try the first Monday, or perhaps Tuesday. Maybe Wednesday is the best day for your customers because none of your competitors are sending out messages. The point is that timing is one aspect of your marketing efforts that’s typically inexpensive to change and may boost response rates. It’s worth testing.

5. Offer

What are you offering your customers? Are you trying to get them to sign up for a magazine, buy a book, order a free information kit or take some other action? Change the wording of the offer. If you give away a premium or a free shipping incentive, test one against the other. Does the premium generate a higher response rate or the free shipping incentive? Modest changes in how the offer description is worded may clarify the offer further or entice customers with more appealing language.

No matter which element you test, be sure to roll out your A/B test at the same time.  Don’t send out your control first, then your test. Even the difference of a week or two between the pieces can alter the results so much as to make the test untenable.  Change one variable per test for your A/B testing efforts, and be sure to have a clear-cut method of tracking the responses.  Soon you should have enough data to tell which among your test piece is the clear winner.


Page 26 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed




What is A/B Testing and How Can It Help Your Site?



alt="What is A/B Testing and How Can It Help Your Site?" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/a-b-test-on-writework-500x286_c.jpg" />

I once heard A/B testing described as the internet equivalent of sex in high school: everyone says they are doing it, but few really are.  A/B testing is simply the systematic process of testing various elements of your website to understand how subtle changes affect user behavior.  By employing testing strategies, you can increase your conversions, improve open rates on email marketing campaigns, and drive visitor focus to a specific area of your website (i.e. drawing their eye to your email sign-up form).

So How Do I Know If I Need to be A/B Testing?

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/0621-10.jpg" alt="" width="750" />

That’s a great question, and the answer is really easy: you do.

Let me explain. If you are anything less than 100% satisfied with the performance of all your efforts online, then testing needs to be part of your toolkit. Do you wish more people visited your site?  Bought your products?  Increased your profit per customer?  Clicked on your ads?

Of course you do.

Marketers and web professionals are, by nature, creative people.  Inspiration strikes and projects take shape, websites are put on the internet, products are created.  That’s the beauty of the entrepreneurial spirit – the speed at which life can be breathed into a product that has the potential to solve real problems, attract customers, and positively influence both the world and your bank account is staggering.

But when reality sets in and things aren’t moving as well as you’d like, or they are moving but you want to increaclass="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6385" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/a-b-test-on-writework.jpg" alt="a-b test on writework" width="750" height="430" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/a-b-test-on-writework.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/a-b-test-on-writework-300x172.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />se the capture of data, revenue, and attention, the application of more systematic tools such as A/B testing can dramatically accelerate the rate at which you reach those goals.

A Primer on Testing

So A/B testing is simply a way to say that you’re testing a single variable.  Let me explain.  When a visitor lands on your website, she sees your opt-in box.  It is blue.  In an A/B test scenario, when a second visitor lands on your site, everything is exactly the same except for the color of your opt-in – now it’s red.  Using simple software tool such as Google Optimizer, you repeat this experiment over the course of a few days and several hundred visitors to your site.

At the end of the test, you look at the results and you find out that only 3% of visitors signed up when your opt-in was blue, but 5% signed up if it was red.  Right now you may be thinking, 3% – 5%.  So what? Well, let’s assume your site receives 1000 visitors per day.  That adds up to an additional 7,300 people that will join your mailing list this year, thanks to one simple change.

Over time, you may continue to test additional variables – what if you tested out two different headlines, or incentives for signing up?  Or what if you moved the position of the box to a different place on your website?  Either of these factors could have an increased impact on your conversion rates, allowing you to improve on them over time.

More sophisticated testing – called multivariate testing – allows you to test multiple variables at the same time such as different combinations of color and headlines for example.  This can put you closer to your optimal conversions even more quickly, but are more complex to manage. If you need multivariate testing, I would recommend hiring an expert to conduct this for you.  Plus the results that you’ll see when employing testing for the first time, those incremental improvements in the ability to persuade website visitors to follow your calls to action, are often enough.  When dipping a toe into the pool of testing, start by looking at single variables to improve.

How Do I Know What to Test?

A common question from website owners is how to know href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/ab-testing-the-top-five-things-to-test/">which variable to test.  The following list will get you started in terms of looking at different features that you might want to prioritize to quickly improve bottom-line effecting results.

Opt-in to your email list If you operate a website and are collecting emails, that’s a great thing.  An email list is your most valuable asset, in the instance of your site getting de-indexed, issues with your hosting provider, or any other problems, an email list allows you to still immediately reach your customers.  So look at variables that could be affecting your opt-ins, such as placement of the box, color of the box, what information you’re asking for, the language you’re using, and more.

Email headlines If you do a lot of email marketing, consider conducting an A/B test on your headline with 10% of your list.  Write two versions of the headline and send those out.  Then compare conversion rates, and use the headline with the higher open rate on the remaining 90% of your list.

Call to actions What’s the big call to action on your page?  For example, if you operate a site that sells vitamins, your call to action is to get people to buy your product.  So take a look at all the ways you invite them buy.  Maybe it’s through the placement of a “shop” link in the menu bar.  Could you position that differently?  Turn it a color that makes it “pop” more?  If you are selling the same product through a squeeze page, consider looking at factors as simple as the difference between “Buy Now!” and “Click Here to Order!”  Isolate the individual factors that communicate your call to actions and refine them for maximum conversions.

I’m convinced – so how do I get started?

In a future post, we’ll look at the technological aspects of A/B testing.  But if you’re ready to dive in and want an easy to use and low cost (free) solution, Google offers a tool called rel="nofollow" href="http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer" target="_blank">Google Optimizer and recently launched Google Content Experiments (see video below) that you can start the process within minutes.

src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TGrujIh2H0I" width="600" height="338" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen">

If you’re interested in learning more, or seeing specific case studies of A/B testing in action, check-out the following recommended reading:

  • href="http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/08/12/google-website-optimizer-case-study/" rel="nofollow">Google Website Optimizer Case Study
  • href="http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/a-b-testing-case-study-navigation-menu/" rel="nofollow">A/B Testing Case Study On Navigation Menu
  • href="http://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31634/A-B-Testing-in-Action-3-Real-Life-Marketing-Experiments.aspx" rel="nofollow">A/B Testing In Action: 3 Real Life Marketing Experiments
  • href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/ab-testing-the-top-five-things-to-test/" rel="nofollow">A/B Testing: The Top 5 Things To Test
  • href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/ab-testing-part-2-the-technical-how-tos/" rel="nofollow">The Technical How-to in A/B Testing

Page 23 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed




A/B Testing – Part 2: The Technical How Tos



alt="A/B Testing – Part 2: The Technical How Tos" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/a-b-testing-result--500x340_c.jpg" />

So now you’ve decided that it’s time to use href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/what-is-ab-testing-and-how-can-it-help-your-site/">A/B testing in improving the quality and conversions of your site.  In the following installment, we’ll be taking a closer look at the tools you can use and provided a detailed “how-to” for the free and popular Google Website Optimizer. There are a number of commercial options on the market for A/B testing; in this article we’ll touch briefly on these options to help you make an educated decision. But The Google tool offers a full suite of options, is free, and integrates with other Google tools such as Analytics.

For these reasons, Website Optimizer is a great choice for most marketers or webmasters getting started with the A/B testing process.

What Is A/B Testing?

To briefly revisit, A/B testing is the process of putting forward two versions of something and seeing which one performs better. Common topics of A/B testing include headlines, placement of images, calls to actions, color schemes, and more.

Over time, marketers can use systematic A/B testing to find out which elements convert a higher percentage of visitors to their website, recipients of their emails, and viewers of advertisements. Systematic testing results in data-driven decisions about which campaigns should receive their focus and investment. This will help you attract more visitors, make more money, and have a more successful business.

Tools For A/B Testing

In this piece, we’re going to focus primarily on title="Google Website Optimizer" rel="nofollow" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Website_Optimizer">Google Website Optimizer which is a free tool that integrates smoothly with Google Webmaster tools and Google Analytics.

However, it should be noted that there are a number of commercial tools that are also available including Optimizely and SumoOptimize.  Technically, there are a hundred different software packages on the market that include different features and become increasingly complex technologically. We’ll explore a few of these options at the end of this article.

Getting Started With Google Website Optimizer

style="border: 1px solid #cccccc; padding: 2px;" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/XJT9TCqzw4U" width="750" height="563" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen">
Before continuing with this article, watch this excellent, short introduction to the tool provided by Google.  It will contextualize the how-to and tutorial that follows here and give you a great head-start on understanding the flow of Website Optimizer which can be slightly counterintuitive until you get started.

To begin, visit rel="nofollow" href="http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer">www.google.com/websiteoptimizer

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1101-1.jpg" alt="" width="750px" />

Sign in with your Google username and password.

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1101-2.jpg" alt="" width="750px" />

Once you’re in, click on the Get Started button.  This will take you to the Google Analytics Terms of Service.  Read and accept those, and the click continue.

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1101-3.jpg" alt="" width="750px" />

Once you click continue, this will take you to the Google Optimizer Dashboard. Select “Create Experiment” and then this will take you to the following page, asking which kind of experiment you would like to select.  Beginners should choose the A/B experiment.

Once you’ve selected the A/B experiment, this will take you to the A/B experiment check list which outlines some important data on information that you need know about how the A/B experiment operates.

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1101-6.jpg" alt="" width="750px" />

The instructions will remind you that it’s important to choose the page that you would like to test, such as your homepage or a specific product detail page. It then advises you to go on and create alternate versions of your page to test. Finally, it recommends that you decide what page people will see once they convert, regardless of what page they come in from.

Once you reach this stage, stop.  If necessary, review href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/what-is-ab-testing-and-how-can-it-help-your-site/">my previous article about A/B testing .  Ensure that you’ve decided what variable to test and created two different versions of them, with different URLs.  Finally, make sure you’re clear on the conversion page that will come up afterwards.

Once you’re done, check the box next to “I’ve completed the steps above and I’m ready to start setting up my experiment” and click the “Create” button.

This will take you here:

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1101-7.jpg" alt="" width="750px" />

Give the experiment a unique name such as “Sales Headline Test” and then enter the URLs of each of your test pages.  Google will verify that they are active.

Finally, enter your conversion page and click ”Continue”.

class="border" src="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/images/2012/1101-8.jpg" alt="" width="750px" />

You will then be given the JavaScript tags necessary to be added to your website, or able to provide a set of instructions to a member of your team to handle the installation.

Once this is complete, you will return back to this same page to verify that installation is complete and to monitor the progress of your test.

Monitoring the success of your A/B test

Google recommends at least 100 conversions to be able to indicate a percentage of success.  In the simplest terms, you’re looking for which of the two pages encourages people to take the indicated action the most.  So if 100 people visit each of your pages, and option A converts at 4% while option B converts at 6% then option B is your “winner.”

But how many visitors are really enough to know when you’ve got a winner, versus a statistically anomaly?  The opinions vary, even among professional A/B testers.  A number of factors need to be taken into account to reach a valid sample size: these range from daily visits to the current conversion rate and the number of version you’re testing.

Two tools that can help you calculate the right information are the rel="nofollow" href="https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/siteopt/help/calculator.html">Google Optimizer Calculator and the rel="nofollow" href="http://www.amadesa.com/did-you-know/test-calculators">A/B Experiment Duration Calculator. When possible, you want to aim for 95% statistical accuracy, with a 5% margin of error. It’s worth extending the test a bit longer before making your final decision.

Some hints to make your first test a success

  1. Test a page with high traffic level  When you’re ready to A/B test for real results, pick a page that receives a decent amount of traffic. The higher the traffic, the sooner you’ll reach a valid test sample and have a completed experiment. The results demonstrated from this experiment will help motivate you to incorporate testing into your overall strategy.
  2. Work with a high-conversion goal Along the same lines as choosing a page that gets a lot of traffic, it’s important to work on a conversion that people actually take. Adding items to a shopping cart, signing up for your newsletter, or viewing a critical section of your website are good goals. Test on actions that people take regularly, so it doesn’t take as long to get your data.
  3. Choose an important conversion goal Choose a conversion that matters, such as opt-ins or sales. Testing for the sake of understanding consumer behavior is interesting, but testing for the purposes of actually strengthening your business will keep you focused.
  4. Look at time on page as a conversion goal If your goal is to prevent bouncing or keep people reading your content longer, one option to consider is tracking time spent reading a page as a conversion goal. The full tutorial on how to do that is available rel="nofollow" href="http://support.google.com/websiteoptimizer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=74345&topic=14314&ctx=topic" target="_blank">here.
  5. Consider testing big items If you’re unsure of where to get started with your testing, a few obvious choices are headlines, product descriptions, graphics, placement of contact information, your call to action, and pricing. Each of these will yield meaningful information that you’re able to improve visitors’ experiences with right away.

Example tests

If you’re still struggling to conceptualize A/B testing or you simply want to see some tests in action, here are two great resources.

Which Test Won

rel="nofollow" href="http://whichtestwon.com/">Which Test Won is a site that shows you real life examples of A/B testing that was conducted by expert firms. You vote on which one you expected to have won.  You then get to see the real results as well as the case study behind the test. Spending some time on this site will help you build strong pattern recognition.

A/B Test

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6385 border" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/a-b-test-on-writework.jpg" alt="a-b test on writework" width="750" height="430" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/a-b-test-on-writework.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/a-b-test-on-writework-300x172.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" /> class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-6386 border" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/a-b-testing-result-.jpg" alt="a-b testing result" width="750" height="510" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/a-b-testing-result-.jpg 750w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/a-b-testing-result--300x204.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px" />

rel="nofollow" href="http://www.abtests.com/">A/B Test is another site that allows you to look at case studies by type of test, view both versions, and then see which outperformed the competition. While it’s less interactive, the ability to get ideas by type of test can be very valuable to marketers interested in using testing to solve a specific problem.

Other A/B Testing Tools

Finally, I want to address the question of whether Google Website Optimizer is the right tool for everyone. The short answer is that I think it’s the right tool for the beginner and it’s the right tool for the average user. There are substantial advanced features that we haven’t touched on in this article and may explore for a future piece.

So in what instances do you need to consider other tools?

  1. If you’re going to be conducting ongoing, enterprise level multivariate testing for complex sites such as ecommerce sites with thousands of pages, a commercial tool might better fit your needs. (Consider rel="nofollow" href="https://www.optimizely.com/" target="_blank">Optimizely).
  2. If you’re opposed to corporate backed software, there is an open source tool called Genetrify.
  3. If you’re interested in more advanced testing of conversions along a funnel, rel="nofollow" href="http://analytics.blogspot.com/2012/07/making-google-analytics-content.html" target="_blank">Google Content Experiments (which Google is ultimately transitioning Google Website Optimizer) is the product to check out.
  4. If you are using WordPress and wonder href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/how-to-run-ab-testing-on-your-wordpress-sites/" target="_blank">how A/B testing can be done on WP, read Rochester’s article.

As you build your comfort with A/B testing, you can test additional variables and continue to iterate a page or website that dramatically increases your conversions, giving you more subscribers and better income.


Page 22 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed




How To Run A/B Testing On Your WordPress Sites



alt="How To Run A/B Testing On Your WordPress Sites" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/0523-3-500x250_c.jpg" />

I bet you want to get the most out of your site. Sometimes we take some decisions based more in our feeling than in actual data or tests and there’s where the danger lies.

What if I tell you that you are losing sales because of the color of your button? You’d call me crazy, sure, but how do you make sure that everything in your page is in the optimal setup in order to increase results?

Let me introduce you the href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/inbound-marketing/what-is-ab-testing-and-how-can-it-help-your-site/">A/B testing method.

This simple method help you testing different versions of your site with your real visitors and measuring results, so you’ll know which version is better than the other.

Today we’ll understand more this process and learn how to set this up in your WordPress site.

The A/B Testing Method

As we said before, the main goal here is to test 2 versions of an element in order to define which one you should use.

style="text-align: center;">class="aligncenter wp-image-1432 border" alt="A / B Test" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/0523-3.jpg" width="750" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/0523-3.jpg 600w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/0523-3-300x150.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" />

A key word in this process is style="text-decoration: underline;">conversion (or conversion rate). It measures how many users have achieved the goal defined in that page. So if you have a sales page the goal is certainly click the “buy” button. But you could also have a newsletter subscription page, then your goal would be the “subscribe” button (with a valid email address would be even better :D). If you have a posts listing page you can assume that the goal is getting the user to read one post, and in the post page the goal may be amaze the user so much that he’ll share or comment (hey, multiple goals!).

You get the idea, right? So in the A/B test we measure the conversion rate for the A version, and the conversion rate for the B version so we’ll know which version we should keep after some time, in order to increase our results.

But there are some rules. In order to understand what is causing the difference in the conversion rate you should only test one element at a time. This is important, because you may have conflicting elements, if you change more than one you simply can’t ensure that the A or B is better and the goal here is to have all key elements in their better shape (if you change everything it’s harder to test and analyze results).

Why Should I Test?

One question that may pop once a while is: why should I waste my time on this?

The answer is quite compelling, style="text-decoration: underline;">increasing conversion is the easiest way to improve results. Your final result depend on traffic (how many users you have) and your conversion rate (how many users have done what they should do there in order to make you happy).

Traffic is much harder to build, it depends on marketing budget, href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/category/blog/seo/">SEO knowledge, and href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/category/blog/socialmedia-marketing/">social media marketing skills. Conversion on the other hand in your full control. You can change pretty much anything in your site in order to increase the conversion so you’ll have more results with the same traffic.

Why Do I Test Only 2 Versions?

As the A/B name suggests the recommendation is 2 versions per test (the control / original and the variation). But why can’t we test 2, 3 or 4 variations? The truth is, you can but that will require a lot of traffic.

With 2 versions you need small traffic to mathematically ensure that your conversion result isn’t an exception, but the tendency (pretty much the same science that helps us in polls, to define that a sample will represent well the whole).

What Should You Test?

The first thing, dear Padawan, is defining your goals. Of course we want to improve everything but you should define a single element or a small set of elements to test.

Here are some suggestions:

  • Your “buy” button font size, color, background and position
  • Having a moneyback guarantee message or not
  • Adding a “Verisign-like” badge or not (those badges that “ensure” that your site is safe)
  • Labels above the fields, in the same line, as mad-libs (this is quite awesome, we will certainly talk about this in other articles)
  • Having optional fields or suppressing them (and adding somewhere else, like in the profile edit page)
  • Search box position
  • Number of posts per column (a single post, 2 posts, infinite posts?)

And, here’s an infographic quoted from the

So, after you have defined your goals we can start the implementation. We can use quite a few tools to help us there, let’s see them.

WordPress Plugin For A/B Test: Max A/B

The first plugin we’ll see is href="http://wordpress.org/plugins/maxab/">MaxA/B. This is an awesome free plugin to test your versions. Install and activate it, and you’ll see a new menu item in your WP admin panel.

Before actually using it you need to create your control and test versions (A and B page). Create 2 simple pages, here what I’ve done is a simple page with a link to contact us like this:

style="text-align: center;">class="size-full wp-image-1348 aligncenter" alt="Max A/B" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/1.jpg" width="615" height="408" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/1.jpg 615w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/1-300x199.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 615px) 100vw, 615px" />

In this case you can use pretty much anything you want to test, as per defined in your goals. Then let’s get our hands dirty, go to “experiments” and you’ll see this screen:

style="text-align: center;">class="size-full wp-image-1345 aligncenter" alt="2" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/2.jpg" width="615" height="308" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/2.jpg 615w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/2-300x150.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 615px) 100vw, 615px" />

Now you can imagine how this will look like when we actually fill up our data :) Well, go ahead and add a new experiment. Add a cool name, your control version and your first variation. You can add up to 3 variations, which is good but remember that the more variations you have, more traffic you need to validate the conversion rate.

The conversion page is an important concept, it’s the goal of your conversion. For instance, if you have a “buy” button, the conversion page is the “payment” page. If you have a subscription page, the conversion is the “thanks” page and so on. This simply tells to the plugin that every time a user goes to “contact” page from our “test page” it means that he completed the goal and that should count in the conversion rate.

Then you can set when your experiment ends and you’re good to go.

Here is what I’ve done there:

style="text-align: center;">class="size-full wp-image-1346 aligncenter" alt="3" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/3.jpg" width="615" height="308" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/3.jpg 615w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/3-300x150.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 615px) 100vw, 615px" />

After you create, you’ll let your users access your pages. After a few access your results table will look quite close to this:

style="text-align: center;">href="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/4.jpg">class="size-full wp-image-1347 aligncenter" alt="4" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/4.jpg" width="615" height="429" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/4.jpg 615w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/4-300x209.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 615px) 100vw, 615px" />

Here you can see that the “Improvement” between our control and the variation is actually negative, which means that the variation page is worse than the original. You can check also the statistical significance of your results.

This is a cool approach, but sometimes what needs to be tested can be in a sidebar, homepage or any other place. Then we’ll need a different tool.

WordPress Themes For A/B Test: SES Theme Split Test

Here you can use the href="http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/wordpress-blog/getting-started-with-wordpress-child-themes/">child theme concept in your favor. You can create a variation in a different place of the theme (sidebar, custom page template, number of posts called in the homepage) and compare the performance between the themes.

As I said before, avoid modifying a lot of things, otherwise you don’t know what exactly improved your performance.

After you have installed or created the child theme you can actually use the SES plugin. After installing and activating the plugin you can go to Settings > SES Theme Split Test where you’ll see this screen:

style="text-align: center;">class="size-full wp-image-1349 aligncenter" alt="5" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/51.jpg" width="615" height="337" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/51.jpg 615w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/51-300x164.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 615px) 100vw, 615px" />

There you can select which themes you’ll test. Then you’ll need to use a different tool to track your results, in our case we’ll set this up via Google Analytics.

This is quite an easy step, create your account there and set up your site’s analytics. After you’ve pasted the analytics code and validated it you can go to the “Advanced Segments” section of your GA panel, in the top menu (beneath date). This is the screen that you’ll see:

style="text-align: center;">href="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/61.jpg">class="size-full wp-image-1350 aligncenter" alt="6" src="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/61.jpg" width="615" height="252" srcset="http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/61.jpg 615w, http://whsr.webrevenueinc1.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/61-300x122.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 615px) 100vw, 615px" />

Let the “User defined values” then check the “Matches Exactly” option and you’ll see that it automatically loads plugin data. Now “create a segment” and then we’re done to get our data.

Wrapping up

So, what do you think about this method? Would you use it? Share your thoughts with us!


Page 20 – Web Hosting Secret Revealed