What is Split Testing? How to Do It?

You need good marketing strategies if you are a website owner expecting leads from your new online business. With split testing, you can raise the post-click landing page conversion rate. It involves comparing multiple versions of your website’s landing page and identifying which version is more capable of delivering leads. To perform split testing, you need to know what split testing is, and then you can run it on your website. Let’s get into it.

What is Split Testing?

Split testing is a way to test different versions of your website or separate elements. You can compare these versions or elements against each other to identify which works best. Before you begin spilt testing your website, you will need to control the authentic rendition of your website. And then, you will need a variant that will be resembled the control. If control is the actual version of your site, then the variant is the new version of your site. When you compare them against each other, you will be capable of distinguishing which of these works better. Always remember that “working better” means which version brings more conversions. Conversions do not mean only leads; they can also refer to signing up for your newsletter. 

With split testing, you can improve the quality of your web pages and your marketing techniques to improve the chance of how your target audience interacts with your website. Its main focus is to create call-to-actions more effectively so that your customers engage themselves more in your products and services. Split testing is comprehended as A/B testing, where you divide your website’s traffic into 50/50. 50% of traffic will visit the actual rendition of your site, and 50% of traffic will visit the new version of your site. However, with A/B testing, you can test more than two versions of your site. But if your site does not have much traffic, don’t test more than a maximum of four versions at once because it will take a lot of time to produce results.

What’s the Difference Between A/B Testing and Split Testing?

Most website testers use A/B testing and spilt Testing mutually. However, there is no actual definition of AB testing or split testing. The discrepancy lies in how you implement them. For example, in AB testing, you test the same URL, and in split testing, you test multiple URLs. Therefore, when running an AB testing experiment, the URL will be the same for every website visitor, but different HTML components of that webpage are modified. AB testing is performed in a way where it is to test multiple elements, and split testing is to test multiple page layouts at the same time. 

One more way to clarify the difference between AB testing and split testing is by saying that split testing is a part of AB testing where it runs multiple URLs or the website simultaneously to identify which one is more effective. Thus, if you want to test a specific page element like the call-to-action button, then you can perform A/B testing. But if you want to compare the different designs of the same webpage, for example, a long-form sign-up letter with a short-form video letter, then go with split testing.

Why Is It Important to Run a Split Test on Your Website?

Most website marketers recommend split testing when they figure that their website is not landing high-quality leads or believe that the website could provide better results. If you can split test your website, you can expect these benefits out of it:

• You don’t have to ‘guess’ what works for your target audience; instead, you can run a simple test and get the information immediately. It shall assist you in making a more suitable marketing campaign. 

• You will learn how the customers respond to your website.

• By running split testing, you can gain a lot of insights about what works for the customers, and therefore, it improves your business. 

• You can create better and more impactful content. 

• You can maximize the number of web traffic on your website and how much time they spend on your platform.

• Split testing is a way to reduce the risks of making the changes permanent by testing them beforehand.

• You can generate more monthly revenues if you get more leads and deals by implementing small changes. 

In simple words, split testing is an affordable and easy way to create effective marketing campaigns to generate more web traffic and leads. 

How to Start Split Testing on Your Website?

Before starting split testing, it’s recommended that you create a well-structured plan to make the operation more efficient. Here is the process of creating a successful split testing campaign:

Research

You need to spend a significant amount of time researching and understanding how your website is performing. Some qualitative and quantitative data gathering tools will help you with the operation. Observe a certain element or page layout that you want to split test for a certain period and collect all the important data you get from it. 

Observe and Create a Hypothesis

After gathering all the data, take some time to observe them and assemble user insights to create a data-backed hypothesis. You can test this hypothesis or compare them with different parameters, including ease, its impact on the customers, its confidence, and so on. Ease means how hard or easy it will be to execute the changes and implement the test. Impact refers to how well the test will favorably impact your customers. And confidence means your belief in the truth of the hypothesis.

Prepare Variations

Variations are a part of the original version with desired changes. After creating a hypothesis, prepare the variations with a visual editor. These variations are then compared against the original version of your website.

Run the test

After creating all the variations, you want to test, prepare the test. After running the test, you will have to wait a considerable amount of time for it to produce results. However, regardless of the test you run, you should wait for it to be completed first. Don’t stop the test during the run because you will likely get the wrong results. 

Analysis of the Result and Their Deployment

In this stage, you analyze the results of the split test after its successful running. You will have to check if the variations show more positive results than the original version. If the variations are ahead of the original version, implement the changes. But if the variations are not good enough, evaluate the data and start the process again.

Before running split testing, you should research the tools first because, without the best tools, you can’t create a positive impact on your website.

How to Discover a Good Split Testing Tool?

Some of the essential features in your testing tool should help you develop intuitive test versions of your website. Here are the most significant factors that your tool must contain:

• It should provide accurate data insights with session recordings, NPS scores, heatmaps, etc., to determine what your customers want.

• It should contain an easy-to-use visual editor that will help you create experiments with ease.

• The tool should contain an expandable template library to create impactful marketing campaigns.

• It should contain advanced personalization capabilities to help you reach your target audience. 

• It should gather in-depth information about the customers and various business metrics. 

• The tool should be able to run multiple tests simultaneously but in isolated environments to ensure that one test does not influence the result of another.

• Must be able to run with minimum developer’s help.

• Use various widgets, banners, pop-ups, etc. to create more leads

• Quickly access accurate outcomes to identify if your hypothesis will show any positive results or not. 

• Speedily deploy tests and produce results throughout the process.

After finding a tool with all these capabilities, you can start the split testing process instantly and build a strong marketing campaign.

Conclusion: Examples of Split Testing

The Conversion Rate Experts conducted the test. This test was a comparison between short-form sale pages and long-form sales pages. The short-form was the original version, and the long-form was the original version with desired changes. The new version of the web page generated more than $1 million/year after being split tested. Visit the Moz landing page case study to see how split-testing looks. Visit the Moz landing page case study to see how split-testing looks.

Analyzing the behavior of your traffic will help you understand the intention of your customers. For example, the people who come to your site from social media expect something else from you than the people who find you from the organic search results. The social media traffic is more into entertainment, while search engine traffic is looking for solutions. Therefore, according to the performance of the best traffic sources, you should create landing pages that attract each user segment.