Introduction:
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) has been a frequent source of inspiration for me since I started to experiment with it, its potential to change the course of an online business without needing a gigantic amount of traffic captured my attention almost instantly. By that moment, I was doing micro-jobs on Fiverr and decided to change small details in my gigs to see if all this testing stuff worked for me, and it came out to be one of the best decisions I could take. I found better keywords that provided me with a lot more impressions, little tweaks on the titles and pictures that converted more of those impressions into clicks and some changes in the copy turned more of those clicks into paying customers, guess why I’m so fascinated
Those experiments led me to discover a new universe of tools and techniques used to improve a website’s performance. In this particular occasion I’m going to focus on tools used to perform a successful A/B Tests and gather the information you need to improve your conversions, but first, I’m going to give a quick explanation for those of you who aren’t familiar with the subject
Brief Introduction to A/B Testing and CRO:
Imagine this scenario: you are investing way too much on online ads and though is generating some returns is evident to you that it won’t be a sustainable tactic if your traffic keeps bouncing like kids on a trampoline and of the few ones that stay only 1% is converting. Luckily for you (and for anyone in the online business world whatsoever) here’s where CRO proves useful. Using data like analytics and user feedback (And a bit of creativity) you can find possible modifications to the copy, design, and every part of your website that could increase your chances of converting your visitors, increasing your ROI without spending on more and more traffic. One of the most popular tactics to achieve this is A/B Testing
People at VWO define A/B Testing (Also called Split Testing) as “comparing two versions of a web page to see which one performs better.” this pretty much sums it up. You make a single modification to a segment of your website and wait for your visitors to come, after some time, you should have collected enough data to compare both versions of your site and then you can choose the one that converted more visitors. The idea is that you use this technique to improve your overall conversions one test at a time, you can turn that sad 1% from before into a shining 35% or higher
There’s a variety of tools that you can use to perform an A/B Test with different features and properties; now I’m going to give you a tour around 10 of these tools so that you can start to put in action this powerful technique
1. KISSmetrics:
Though not exactly an A/B Testing tool, you can’t perform tests without data and KISSmetrics offers one of the most popular and complete analytics suites out there. You can use this information to get test ideas and prove your results, some functions in its JavaScript library can help you to set up your tests by randomly showing one of your variations to your visitors and tracking conversions. You can also integrate KISSmetrics with other testing software to combine its powerful analytics with specialized functionalities
Price: $200 – $2000 a month
URL: https://www.kissmetrics.com/
2. Google Analytics Content Experiments:
Google offers a free service that can help you to get interesting and useful results, it allows you to test 5 different variations of your website from a separate URL with a percentage of your visitors and the objectives for your experiments; it will also send you emails with updates on the status of your tests
Price: Free
URL: http://www.google.com/analytics/features/content.html
3. AB Tasty:
An A/B Testing platform made with love from Paris. With a statistical reliability indicator, test targeting options, and a visual editor for creating variations among its functionalities. It provides a robust environment to prepare, monitor, run your experiments, and choose a winning variation. It even provides personalized messages for your audience which can be useful for more than running tests
Price: $34 – $370 a month
4. A/Bingo
You are going to love this one if you work with Ruby on Rails, A/Bingo is a RoR framework written as a plugin that you can use to measure conversions and behavioral differences in your variations without guesswork or relevant changes in page load time. One line of code to start a test and another one to track conversions and that’s all you need for a clean and fast integration into your processes. It doesn’t have limitations when it comes to defining what a “conversion” means, clicks, page views, players reaching Lvl 5 on your MMORPG, etc. It’s also open source so you can see the code by yourself and modify it as you need
Price: Free
URL: https://www.bingocardcreator.com/abingo
5. Unbounce
Landing pages are a key part of a marketing funnel, if you are going to send your visitors to a landing page then you might want to optimize it to influence as many conversions as possible. Unbounce is an excellent choice when it comes to landing pages, is trusted by brands like Twitter, Hootsuite, and Zoho. One of its advantages is that making A/B Tests is very easy with Unbounce; you just have to create a new variation and publish it to start collecting data from your visitors
Price: $49 – $199 a month
URL: http://unbounce.com
6. Optimizely
One of the leading testing tools in the market, its users can benefit from its A/B Testing functions by discovering customer insights from both desktop and mobile. Its code-free visual editor will allow you to create targeted experiences for your visitors and generate ROI in real time even if you don’t know how to code. You will have a complete ecosystem of resources and partners at your disposal to help you with your tests
Price: Free – Contact them for enterprise plans
URL: https://www.optimizely.com
7. AdBasis
What I love about AdBasis is that it’s focused on online ads and the entire paid-acquisition funnel, while Unbounce is excellent for designing and optimizing your landing pages, AdBasis is the perfect solution for those who chose paid options to get visitors to their websites. You can build your ad content, design, and messaging with its Adobe Photoshop integration; uncover optimal keywords, demographics, schedule, send that traffic to the best landing pages and, finally, test different variations of each segment of the process
Price: Free demo available, contact them for pricing
8. AdClouds
This one is a pretty tool that combines banner creation and testing in a single software focused on CTR and ROI. You can save hours of testing and it integrates with Adwords, AdRoll, your website, and many more advertising platforms so you can see the results of your experiments almost immediately
Price: Free to create banners and variations, 3% of banner spend when you use it with AdWords and $0.02 per thousand impressions for other traffic sources
URL: https://adclouds.io
9. UsabilityTools
If you want to answer questions like “How to get more customers with the same amount of traffic?”, “How to create an optimal mobile shopping experience?”, and “How to generate new and A/B Testing ideas?” this is the right tool for you, it will give you actionable insight to design effective tests
Price: $19 – $49 a month
URL: usabilitytools.com
10. Visual Website Optimizer (VWO)
My personal favorite, among its many features you will find a great visual editor to create your variations, real-time reports to see what is working and what is not, heatmaps and clickmaps to understand visitor behavior, and you can integrate it with a lot of services, your website, and your mobile landing pages. It will provide you with frequent test ideas based on research and user feedback; you can use its targeting and personalization features to deliver an even better user experience and on top of all that, is easy to set up, just copy and paste a code and you’re ready to go. All these features make of VWO a robust A/B Testing platform that you can use for every stage of the testing process. Its developers, the people at Wingify, offer a 24/7 support tailored to your expertise level
Price: $49 – $129, there’s also a custom enterprise plan starting on $999 and a 30 days free trial
URL: https://vwo.com
Conclusion:
A/B Testing tools come in a variety of shapes and with a variety of features, some of them are focused on particular segments of the funnel like landing pages, ads, or banners while others provide a complete environment to perform tests wherever you need them. You can even use different tools for different uses if you find it more efficient than using a single solution for all your testing needs, or you can choose to use an all in one solution if it helps with the productivity of your team. The only thing that matters at the end is that you don’t stop collecting data and making tests to keep your conversion rates growing
And that’s all for now, see you in the next post, happy testing to everyone!
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