What is an A/B Split test?
In this blog I will look to answer the question "What is an A/B split test?"
This another piece of marketing jargon often used. Also used in business intelligence world too and means the same thing.
An A/B split test is quite simply an experiment to test two different options.
It is not really new just as we get into measuring more and more numbers something I spoke about in this weeks Podcast - we start to think about different ways of getting a better result.
Split testing was first being discussed as far back as 1908 when William Sealy Gosset was making changes to the way tests were done.
A good example of where a split test can be preformed is with email subject lines.
So for example lets say you have 100 email signups to your newsletter, you would create two separate subject lines for the same email, both relevant to the content of course. You would then send 25% of your subscribers an email with subject line 1 and another 25% with subject line 2. Whichever email performed best is the subject line you would use for the remainder of your subscribers.
What preformed best is the key. Is that open rates? or click through rates?
This needs to be thought about and considered.
Now I used the example of 100 subscribers and in reality that may not be enough to warrant and time it takes to complete the split tests.
You can split test lots of things, webpages, CTAs social media posts and lots of others. But it needs to be worth your while.
Some simple tests like changing the position or colour of a button has been knows to increase results dramatically.
Think about what might resonate with your audience or community and then test it out.
Regarding software to do this. For email providers it is often built in although sometimes at a premium.  All good marketing automation systems will include it for sure and there are some dedicated services like Optimizly  (not an affiliate link).
Split testing can be very fruitful when you have the numbers to justify it, if your numbers are very low then spend time on other sales and marketing activities as they are far more likely to make a difference to your business.
There is a whole industry built on this and there are specialist people call conversion rate optimisation specialists and this is what they do best. They know and understand what makes people make decisions online and what works and what does not work.
If you are a large enough sized company then consider hiring one of these guys that could make some simple changes and make you a lot more more money.
There are lots more examples and thing that I could discuss but this blog is for the small business owner who just needs to know enough and what to do next.
So I hope that was useful guys? Have you had any amazing results from split testing? Let us know in the comments.
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