Test for the Best
ot everything works first time! Much as it’s down to inspiration, experience and research, you simply won’t see the true indication of a project’s performance potential until it’s been tested in practice.
From site structures to page layouts, mailings to PPC ads, we’d all like to see a noticeable difference in our goals, KPIs and ROI. And if that’s going to be possible, it can only happen by testing and changing influential elements.
Systematic testing pulls in the data to measure which variations generate the best results. This might be an A/B test between two versions of the same piece, or multivariate testing that focuses on particular elements at a time. Then there’s heat mapping to track visitors’ cursor movements and show on-page engagement.
Our first ever A/B test for a mailing headline produced a 52%/48% split in signups from the initial sample size. Hardly a great difference over a few thousand deliveries, but enough to point towards a number of extra white paper downloads for our clients.
Most recently, testing changes to the headline copy and a couple of positioning elements across a series of PPC landing pages gave us wins much more in keeping with expectations – a 15% rise in form completions and 30% increase in video views.
The original PPC headline
Now with newly optimised headline copy
eCommerce sites see the most critical testing, where changes can be measured throughout the promotional and sales processes to base decisions for improving order types, sizes and numbers.
Whether it’s working from analytics and spreadsheets or integrated testing platforms, tests have to run sufficiently to allow for significant results to emerge. And as you’d expect, the larger the elements tested the larger the changes that should result.
Just as testing results check assumptions, feedback also validates them against expectations and intentions for an extra perspective.
After the quick wins have been achieved, essential drivers optimised and results translated globally, the buy-in has to continue wherever there’s scope to improve the conversion process; that’s for clients (with branding, positioning and sales), customers (experience) and non-customers (education and awareness) to all see the gains.
