A Thorough Guide to A/B Testing Landing Pages for Beginners

A/B testing is one of the best ways to see if your digital strategy is working. This is particularly important for landing pages, which drive so much of your digital traffic.

Implementing A/B testing can add extra steps to your digital workflow, but its benefits make this extra work worth it. Here is a quick guide to how you can implement A/B testing for maximum impact and minimum disruption.

What Is A/B Testing?

A/B testing is a principle that has been around since the 1920s. It was first used by statisticians and other scientists who wanted to get the best results in controlled experiments. They would conduct an experiment and then repeat it by only changing one variable, which makes the effect of that one variable easy to see.

In digital marketing and website building, A/B testing refers to testing two different versions of a webpage. You only change one thing on the page, such as the banner image or layout, and then see which one the audience responds to better.

Why Businesses Use A/B Testing

A/B testing is one of the most effective ways in creating effective campaigns. According to the Harvard Business Review, startups using A/B testing and reviews were able to scale more quickly.

Implementing any change, whether that is to your website or your business strategy, involves some degree of uncertainty. A/B testing takes out some of the uncertainty because you have data on how well your initial audience responded to one variable over another.

A/B testing also reduces risk because you only expose a small part of your audience to the variant that proves less effective, rather than tying your whole business to a failed strategy.

When it comes to landing pages, A/B testing is important because so much of a landing page’s success is determined by data—conversion rates, click-through rates, and so on. A/B testing provides data on how effective your landing page is at generating leads and sales.

Types of A/B Testing for Landing Pages

When setting up your A/B test for a landing page, the first decision that you have to make is what type of A/B testing is most effective for you and your business. There are a few different types of tests out there:

Variant A/B testing

You create two version of a landing page and tweak one aspect of the page, then see which variant does better. This is the simplest option.

A/B/C testing

If you can’t choose between three variants of a variable, such as headline copy, create three versions and test their performance.

Multi-page funnel A/B testing

If you’re testing an entire sales funnel rather than a single landing page, you can create A/B variants of the entire funnel to see how a single change affects visitor performance throughout the funnel.

Multivariate A/B testing

While most A/B testing manuals recommend changing only one variable to get clear insight on cause and effect, in certain circumstances, such as when thinking about a business rebrand, you may want to test multiple variables.

Choosing Which Variable to Test

Once you decide which type of A/B testing works best for your business or the landing page that you are planning, you need to choose which variable you are testing. As we mentioned, unless you are opting for multivariate A/B testing, you want to only change one variable so that your data is as clear as possible.

You can use this testing method to evaluate many different variables on your landing page, including landing page copy, banner images, page layout, design, page flow, and more. However, the trick is picking a variable that will give you real, actionable insights into how your landing page works.

By looking at site analytics and heat maps, you can begin to narrow down which variables on your landing page are less effective and which ones may need tweaking. Look at data about where people focus their attention and where they are likely to click. Is your banner image too distracting, driving clicks away from purchase buttons? Do people stop scrolling after a wall of boring copy?

You can also reach out to focus groups or create short visitor surveys if you have a lot of traffic and want customer feedback on which aspects of the landing page don’t work for them.

Setting up the A/B Test

Once you’ve identified which variable you want to test and which form of A/B testing works for you, it’s time to actually set the test up. The details on how you do so will depend on which SEO software and web host you are using, but here are the basic steps.

1. Create two variables of your landing page (the exact steps in doing so will depend on your website and SEO host).
2. Decide on a traffic split. This will send a certain percentage of your visitors to one landing page and a certain percentage to the other. The divide will be randomized so you can isolate the data for maximum effectiveness.
3. Run the test. Make sure to keep both versions of the landing page up long enough so that you get effective data. Keeping the test long enough also ensures that you control for outside factors that may affect your data, such as holidays or service outages that may affect traffic.
4. Look at the data. Monitor the data as the test goes on and then look at the final results once you decide to end the test. Your website host may offer A/B data analysis in-site, or you can use an SEO plug-in. Look at clickthrough rates and conversion rates. Then, use this data to make your decision on which landing page variant to use.

Final Thoughts

A/B testing for landing pages is one of the most effective tools to raise conversion rates that you have at your disposal. If you have the right website host, it is relatively simple to do. Working with professionals to write the best website copy or create the best layout can also help you optimize your landing page and, ultimately, generate more sales.