What Exactly are Companies A/B Testing?

Guinness beer gave the classic A/B Test its start back in the early 1900s. That’s when the “Student” t-test was created to identify the best barley for brewing beer at Guinness.

I’ll drink to that! A/B testing is an excellent way to monitor results of any marketing tool. We’ve seen it in our own business time and again. It helps us steer our clients toward the most effective landing pages and every other marketing device.

In this latest article on the topic, one marketer reports that 21.5% of all their A/B tests have showed some statistically significant impact. That’s one in five – which is actually a good showing.

What types of changes are companies testing? What are the results?

• Changes to the website copy are showing the biggest results in improvement.
• Design changes focused on optimizing the user experience via placement of elements (like buttons), compared to testingcolours or other elements.
• A/B testing is most effective in testing fairly radical changes to websites’ copy and overall layout. Test each element separately, however, to see results clearly.

Companies see the best results when they improve [consumer] experience on their site and write clear and compelling copy. [Consumers] probably care a lot more about a site being easy to use than whether the website uses the perfect shade of blue.

http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/02/facebook-social-advertising/