Increase Conversion Rates with these A/B Test Best Practices

By: Kate Ford

Your last advertising campaign did not produce the conversions you were hoping for but you aren’t sure why that occurred. Before you toss out the whole campaign, you should consider the following areas:

• Did you target the wrong audience?

• Did you test different types of copy?

• Were your graphics and video too “salesy” or boring?

• Was your landing page too difficult to navigate?

If you haven’t considered your campaign from these various angles, you should start analyzing your advertising strategy as a whole. Your strategy should include a clear understanding of your brand and its voice as well as who you want to target and how you plan to target them.

Having a "post and pray" approach to advertising guarantees you only one thing - you'll never actually understand if a campaign resonates with your audience.

To truly ace the advertising game, you ALWAYS need to be testing - from audiences, to locations, to copy or creative and various call-to-actions. As Noah Kagan of AppSumo notes, “If you’re not making mistakes, you’re probably not experimenting enough.”

Luckily, tools like Facebook Ads Manager makes is easy to duplicate at the ad set level so that you can control one variable at a time while keeping the rest of your ad parameters the same.

To properly test your ads, our team has put together a handy list of best practices!

A/B Testing Best Practices:

1. Identify your goal. For example, you might want to test if you get more link clicks using a "Learn More" CTA button versus a "Sign Up Now" button in your newest ad campaign

2. Only test one variable at a time. Continuing with the example above, if you plan to test call-to-action buttons, then your audience (location, gender, age) should stay the same for each different CTA.

3. Go small. People often mistakenly try to run tests between landing pages or ads that are too different to begin with. This makes it hard to determine what your audience was actually responding to. Even the most subtle changes in copy or word placement can increase conversions so make sure to test word placement, different punctuation, emojis, and more!

4. Let the audience decide. Testing is all about leaving your personal biases at the door. Disliking a particular design or how something is phrased doesn't mean we shouldn't test it (within reason and best judgment of course!). Sometimes, what we consider a flop, is actually a hit with our target audience.

5. Allow the test to run for at least a month to gather enough relevant data. Algorithms take time to learn your ad and to start sharing it within your specific audience. You'll end up wasting money and have no real measurable results if you end your ad after only a week or two.

6. KEEP TESTING. It might be discouraging when your first couple of A/B tests do not produce the results you want. Don't stop testing! Your eventual success will typically outweigh the cost of testing AND you will now be moving forward with specific audience knowledge and proven results.

Marketers aren't psychics (as much as we wish we could be!) and consumer behavior often changes quickly. A/B Testing helps to determine what best resonates with your audience and provides specific insights so that you can make INFORMED business decisions. And better information at your fingertips will help you to increase the likelihood of future conversions.

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