Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3 Feb 2nd '10

A website is never finished. It continually needs refinement as the Web grows more mature. But changing an already successful website can be nerve-racking experience. Introducing the power of the A/B testing technique to compare how successful new features of your site are takes away all the worry.

“Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign”

It’s been said many-a-time before, and it’s true to some extent. A website doesn’t always need a full-blown redesign to become successful—and in the case of already successfully sites it’s somewhat unwise. Your customers are already happily using to your website and they know how to use it just fine. Just looking at Amazon shows how little their site has changed over the past decade:

Are your Call To Actions really calling for action?

Even if you don’t realise it your site will need, and has, a Call To Action (CTA), in order to measure some kind of site success. What do you want your visitors to do once they reach your site? Register, contact you, complete a form, read the content? This is where A/B Testing really pays off—on your CTA’s.

You’re never sure how people will interact with your site until you test. Sitting down with potential users and monitoring them is a start, but is slow with a small minority. A/B testing gives you similar results but with hundreds or even thousands of real, live users. Dustin Curtis wrote a very interesting article[2] a while back which found that, through A/B testing, that he could create a 173% increase in click-through on his CTA by rewording “I’m on Twitter” to “You should follow me on Twitter here”.

173% increase. Now imagine that boost for your e-commerce store or enquiry form, and all it would take was a little tweaking.

Written by Christopher Hill

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