What Do You Need To A/B Test In Your Ecommerce Store?
The scope and use of A/B testing or split testing are growing day by day. It has emerged as an “elixir of life� for numerous websites that were earlier on the verge of extinction. This web testing has been a boon in more than one way and has provided concrete results in terms of conversions. There is no doubt about the effectiveness of A/B testing technique but its performance has been limited due to one or more reasons. The prime reason which has emerged in the light is that site owners are just testing anything on their website without even taking the help of any hypothesis or research work. It is good to test multiple elements on your site one by one but the downside is A/B testing involves money, time and efforts which together forms the base for any website. The bottom line is how to make the best possible use of the A/B testing for a site. The question may be tough but the answer is actually simple- Test selectively and objectively. Take a look at some of the high conversion potential areas of a website that can improve the sales and conversions of an eCommerce site.
1. Add to Cart or Call-to-Action (CTA) buttons-
For any eCommerce website, it is important to have a better understanding of the conversion potential of its CTA buttons. You need to analyze the fact that your callto-action buttons are capable of grabbing visitor’s attention and sales towards your website or not. If it is not the case with them, it is important to perform A/B testing on your CTA buttons to improve your conversion rates. You can perform split testing on a wide range of parameters like color, size, placement, CTA statement and other such components to improve the usability of your CTA buttons. These may look trivial things for you to A/B test but all these individual components can influence the conversion rates to a great extent.
2. Pricing related information-
E-Commerce sales are most influenced by the pricing of the products that could win or lose customers for your online store. You need to perform a detailed comparative product pricing of your rival site with your own site to understand where you stand or lose the race. Once, you know about the pricing details of your customers, it will be much easier for you to make your product pricing more affordable. You can perform split testing on the various ways to show the pricing information on your website to assess their conversion potential. Take an example below. Here, a product contains the pricing information alongside it whereas, in another variant, the pricing is revealed at the bottom of the product page. By performing A/B testing on these variants, you can have a better understanding about which pricing page can provide you higher conversions and sales. 3. Checkout process-
The path to higher conversions on an eCommerce site leads to a simplified checkout process. You need to reduce the problems of your customer while making an online product purchase in order to grab their instant customer attention on your site. There are various methods to improve the functionality of your checkout process for higher conversions and sales. Take a look at some of the factors that can help out the checkout process on your online store. - Apply A/B testing on the checkout process of your site say for example, the number of checkout steps/fields/labels, use of trust badges/security seals and other such factors. - Offer popular payment and shipping options for your targeted customers on the checkout page of your online store. - You can take the help of various checkout extensions such as One page checkout module for keeping customers engaged for an online store. - Provide appealing shopping offers and discounts to your targeted customers for making a quick product purchase. 4. Product details-
There are various elements in a site that can affect the customer engagement to a great extent. You need to take care of the images, descriptions and other such details
to your product page to grab the instant attention of the site visitors. You can perform small changes in the product details of your store and then apply A/B testing to understand which variation is most suitable for your online store. Testing can be done on elements like product images, product descriptions, pricing information and other such details that have a direct or indirect impact on the conversions and sales of an online store. 5. Image Carousels-
Having slider on an eCommerce store is a common phenomenon but it may not provide you desired business results always. There are times when people get irritated with the continuous changes in the slider images or get distracted by them in the midst of an important task. Considering the pros and cons of having an image slider on a website, it is important to perform A/B testing on these image sliders. You can perform A/B test based on the presence and absence of an image slider, right placement of the image slider and other such reasons.
6.
Search results-
An easy product searching on an online store can be a great relief for people who are making an online purchase. You need to ensure that your search results are showing products to customers with minimum delay. To improve the effectiveness of your searching results, you can perform A/B testing on the search field in various ways: - You can A/B test the ordering of your search results. - Site owners can perform A/B testing regarding the placement of a search field on a home page.
- You can also apply A/B testing on the search filters of your eCommerce store.
Few words in the end The list of elements that can be A/B test is too huge but we have mentioned here some of the crucial elements in an eCommerce store that deserve immediate attention. It is important to have a clear insight before hand in order to obtain high conversions and sales for your online store. Remember, the key to success is the “Wise testing that is backed by proper research and hypothesis�.