A/B testing is a marketing method that allows you to test the effectiveness of hypotheses by comparing two elements and choose the most effective one.
For example, you want to see if shifting a “Buy now” button to the sidebar of a page instead of keeping it on the top will improve its click-through rate. The current design is called the “control” version (version A). Version B is called the “challenger.” Then you can start testing these two versions by showing them to a predefined number of site visitors to see which version is clicked more. It’s good to divide your sample groups equally and randomly.
A/B testing will allow you to learn more about your visitors, eliminate risk factors and subjectivity in your decisions, focus your energy (and money) on what works best for your audience through what you’ve learned through A/B testing and increase conversion.
Usually, A/B testing is used to test landing pages, welcome emails, and ads. It is better to focus on things that are most likely to have a big impact: search modals, call-to-action buttons, headlines, images, product descriptions, navigation, social sharing buttons etc.
The terms ‘A/B testing’ and ‘split testing’ are often used in the same meaning. But in fact, they are two different types of tests – A/B testing compares two versions by changing one element and split testing compares two distinct designs.
