Anchor your Website Usability Through Split Testing

Are you making some changes to your website? Don’t forget to check its functionality!

So we have web analytics to measure leads into revenues and conversion rates to monitor if our marketing strategies are working to generate sales revenues. Now, we make some changes to improve our ecommerce store and its usability. Again, we need to make certain that these changes will really improve usability of the site.

Split (A/B) Testing Defined.

Split testing, also known as A/B testing or multivariate testing, is a process of performing controlled and randomised tests to improve metrics of a website like form completions, clicks, and orders or purchases made. Traffic that is coming in the website is allocated on the controlled or original and the various types without the knowledge of the visitors that they are part of the experiment. The examiner waits until a relevant behavior change comes out. Hence, the outcome from every variation is compared to know which cluster has the greatest improvement.

This marketing approach is usually utilised to assess the changes on the registration and sign-up forms, calls to action, and any section of the site that can be improved. It can help the website owner to determine the significant factors that can lead to increase in conversions from a particular page to another.

With the use of split testing, subjective choices regarding the website design can be transformed into objective. This is because the data that is gathered from the tests will support or challenge a concept what type of web design is most appropriate. Also, return on investment or ROI can easily be determined because the testing is developed to quantify variables.

Web developers and online marketers can consider testing the following elements of a website:

• On layouts – size and arrangement of menus, forms, and buttons
• On texts – descriptions, calls-to-action features, headlines
• On visual components – colors, videos, and images
• On the flow of visitors – shows how users reach point A to point B

What is the relevance of split testing to usability?

Split test is an experiment where you introduce two choices on two clusters of people and assess how they will react. As a sample, cluster A converts at 1% against the B which converts at 2%. Is there any relevance? May be not. This is because the difference between the two clusters is not too huge to conclude that the data is reliable. “Significant” difference in statistics refers to the ability of showing the real variance instead of some individual differences in every cluster.

Our recommendation is to gather a lot of data. Make sure that your clusters are split evenly or 50/50 and assess decent conversion data. The challenge here is that you may need thousands of visitors before reaching a reliable outcome. For best results, an expert on split testing is recommended.

Well, we hope that we have given you helpful tools to start checking on the usability of your website to achieve business goals. Focus on your web analytics, identify your business goals, utilise conversion rates to assess the status of your goals, and begin using testing the changes that may have some significant effects on your target audience.

Good usability is an art and a process. You may experience trial and error experiences but being consistent in your desire to improve your consumers’ experience, then, in the end you will reap good harvest. You do not have to be alone in this vital task of achieving good usability. There are reputable SEO agencies who have experienced SEO experts who can help you achieve better web analytics, higher conversion rates, and make you understand split testing.

CreativSEO is Sydney-based SEO agency who knows an understands local online business and trends. Contact them through email or call 1 300 055 867 for free consultation.