In this article, you will learn everything there is to know about split testing.

By the end, you will know how to run split tests to improve your marketing efforts’ returns.

Table of Contents

• What Is Split Testing?
• Why Should You Run a Split Test?
• When to Use Split Testing?
• How to Conduct Split Testing
• Best Practices for Split Testing
• Advanced Split Testing Strategies
• Best Split Testing Tools

What Is Split Testing?

Split testing is a method used to compare two versions of a web page, email, or other marketing asset to determine which one performs better. You can gather data on user behavior and preferences by showing version A to one group and version B to another.

It’s a straightforward concept with profound implications for decision-making and optimization.

While split testing compares two different versions, multivariate testing goes a step further by examining multiple variables simultaneously. Though both methods are invaluable, split testing is often the starting point for many due to its simplicity and effectiveness.

Key Components of Split Testing

• Control Group and Variation: The original version serves as the control, while the modified version is the variation.
• Metrics: These are the success indicators, such as conversion rate or click-through rate, that you’ll use to measure the outcome.

Why Should You Run a Split Test?

Here are some benefits that stand out:

Improved User Experience: By understanding what resonates with your target audience, you can tailor experiences that meet their needs and preferences, leading to a more engaging and satisfying interaction with your brand.

Increased Conversion Rates: One of my earliest successes with split testing involved tweaking a call-to-action button on the homepage. By changing its color and text, we saw a 20% increase in sign-ups. It was a small change with a significant impact, highlighting how minor adjustments can lead to significant improvements in conversion rates.

Enhanced Content Effectiveness: Split testing can reveal what types of content your audience prefers, allowing you to produce more of what works and less of what doesn’t, thereby maximizing your content marketing efforts.

Cost Efficiency: By making data-driven decisions, you minimize the risks associated with large-scale changes, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently and effectively.

When to Use Split Testing?

Split testing isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution; it’s most effective when used under the right circumstances. Here are scenarios where split testing shines:

• Website Redesigns: Before overhauling your entire site, test page elements individually to understand their impact on user behavior.
• Landing Page Optimization: This is where I’ve seen the most dramatic results, as even minor tweaks can significantly affect conversion rates.
• Email Marketing Campaigns: From subject lines to email layouts, split testing can help you refine your approach for better engagement.

How to Conduct Split Testing

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to conduct split testing effectively:

Step 1. Define Your Objective

Start by clearly defining what you want to achieve with your split test. Objectives can range from increasing email open rates, improving click-through rates on a webpage, to boosting conversion rates on a product page. Having a clear goal helps in designing the test and measuring success.

Step 2. Identify the Variable to Test

Choose one variable to test at a time to isolate its impact on your objective. This could be anything from a headline, call to action (CTA) button color, email subject line, or image placement. Testing one variable ensures that any changes in performance can be attributed to that specific modification.

Step 3. Create the Variations

Develop two versions of your asset: the control version (A), which is the current version, and the variation (B), which includes the change you’re testing. Ensure that the variations differ only in the variable being tested to maintain the integrity of the test.

Step 4. Segment Your Audience

Divide your sample size audience randomly into two equal groups to ensure that each group is statistically similar. One group will be exposed to the control version, while the other group will see the variation. This randomization helps eliminate biases and external factors that could skew the split test results.

Step 5. Choose the Right Tool

Select a split testing tool that fits your needs. Tools like Google Optimize, Optimizely, and VWO can help you set up, run, and analyze your tests with ease. Ensure the tool you choose integrates well with your website or marketing platform.

Step 6. Run the Test

Launch your test, allowing both versions to run simultaneously for a set period or until you have collected enough data to achieve statistical significance. The duration of the test can vary depending on your website’s traffic, the size of your email list, and the expected difference in performance between the two versions.

Step 7. Analyze the Test Results

After the test is complete, analyze the data to determine which version performed better in achieving your objective. Look for statistical significance in the results to ensure that the observed differences are not due to chance. Tools typically provide this analysis, showing you which version is the winner.

Step 8. Implement and Learn

If the variation outperforms the control, consider implementing the change permanently. If there’s no significant difference or the control performs better, use the insights gained to inform future tests. Every test, whether successful or not, provides valuable information about your audience’s preferences and behavior.

Step 9. Document and Share Insights

Document the testing process, results, and insights from your split test. Sharing these findings with your team can help inform broader marketing strategies and foster a culture of data-driven decision-making.

Step 10. Iterate

Split testing is an iterative process. Based on the insights gained from one test, you can develop new hypotheses and continue testing to optimize further and improve your marketing assets.

By following these steps, you can effectively conduct split testing to make data-driven decisions that enrich your marketing efforts and improve user experience.

Best Practices for Split Testing

Keep Tests Simple: Focus on one variable at a time to clearly understand its impact. Testing multiple variables simultaneously can muddy the waters, making it difficult to pinpoint what led to changes in user behavior.

Ensure Tests Run Long Enough: Patience is key. Running a test for a sufficient duration ensures that you collect enough data to make informed decisions. A test I ran on email send times took weeks to show clear trends, but the insights gained were invaluable for optimizing our email marketing strategy.

Avoid Common Pitfalls: Changing your test mid-way or not waiting for statistical significance can lead to misleading conclusions. It’s also important to avoid testing too many variables at once, as this can complicate the analysis.

Continuous Learning: Every test, whether successful or not, is a learning opportunity. Document your findings and use them to inform future tests and strategies.

Advanced Split Testing Strategies

Advanced split testing strategies provide deeper insights into user behavior and preferences. Here’s a concise overview of some sophisticated approaches:

1. Multivariate Testing

Test multiple variables and their combinations simultaneously to understand their collective impact on user behavior. Ideal for complex pages, requiring more traffic for statistical significance.

2. Sequential Testing

Run a series of tests one after the other, using insights from one test to inform the next. This methodical approach allows for deeper optimization over time.

3. Personalization Testing

Create tailored content for different audience segments based on behavior, demographics, or past interactions. Compare personalized messages against generic versions to drive better engagement.

4. Full Funnel Testing

Examine the entire user journey from engagement to conversion. Optimize the path to purchase by testing variations across multiple touchpoints.

5. Behavioral Email Segmentation

Segment your audience based on their behavior and test different messaging for each group. This strategy enhances the effectiveness of email campaigns.

6. AI and Machine Learning

Use AI and machine learning to predict successful variations, identify testing opportunities, and automate the optimization process.

7. Cross-Channel Testing

Test messaging consistency across different marketing channels (e.g., email, social media, PPC) to understand how they work together to drive conversions.

Implementing these advanced strategies requires a clear hypothesis, sufficient website traffic or data for significance, and the right tools for analysis. Prioritize user experience to ensure testing enhances rather than detracts from user satisfaction.

Best Split Testing Tools

Here’s a list of some of the best split testing tools available, each offering unique features to suit different needs:

1. Optimizely

Features: Optimizely is one of the most popular tools for A/B testing, offering a robust platform that supports multivariate testing, personalization, and mobile app testing. It’s designed for ease of use, allowing marketers to set up and run tests without needing deep technical knowledge.

2. VWO (Visual Website Optimizer)

Features: VWO provides a comprehensive suite of testing and optimization tools, including A/B testing, split URL testing, and multivariate testing. It also offers features for visitor behavior analysis, such as heatmaps and session recordings, to inform testing strategies.

3. Unbounce

Features: Unbounce specializes in landing page optimization and offers A/B testing as part of its platform. It’s particularly useful for marketers looking to boost conversion rates on landing pages with easy-to-use drag-and-drop functionality.

4. Convert

Features: Convert offers advanced A/B testing and multivariate testing capabilities, with a focus on ease of use and data privacy. It’s known for its excellent customer support and GDPR compliance, making it a good choice for businesses concerned about user privacy.

Conclusion

Mastering split testing is crucial for optimizing your strategies and improving outcomes. OptinMonster emerges as a standout tool, offering a comprehensive suite of features for conversion optimization.

It simplifies creating engaging opt-ins and conducting A/B tests, helping you make data-driven decisions to enhance user experience and boost conversion rates.

With OptinMonster, you can easily personalize your campaigns and see real results. In essence, leveraging OptinMonster’s capabilities can significantly elevate your digital marketing efforts, ensuring you stay ahead in the game.

Here’s one of our favorite split testing case study:

Social Media Examiner split tested its opt-in forms regularly to increase its subscribers by 250,000, a 66% increase in daily subscriber signups. The site continued tweaking to see what other improvements it could engineer.

Join OptinMonster today!

More on Conversion Optimization:

• The Ultimate eCommerce Optimization Guide: 13 Steps to Instantly Boost Revenue
• What Is Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)? Complete Beginner’s Guide
• Google Analytics 101: How to Track Your Conversions (Step-by-Step)
• 31 Call to Action Examples + How To Write an Effective CTA
• 11 Best Marketing Automation Software for Small Businesses
• 12 Tips to Reduce Bounce Rate and Boost Your Conversions
• SEO Made Easy—Ultimate Guide to Explode Your Traffic

Qualitative studies are vital to the market research process. They provide an understanding of the reasons and motivations behind consumer decisions. You can use this information to improve your marketing and increase sales.

What does that mean for your business?

If you have a product that isn’t selling as well as you expected, qualitative research can help you understand why. Or, if you’re launching a new marketing campaign, qualitative studies can help you create ads that will entice your target audience.

If you’re new to this kind of market research, you’re in the right place.

In this guide, you’ll learn the basics of qualitative market research. We’ll also share how your business can use qualitative data to better appeal to your customers.

• What is Qualitative Research?

• Why Use Qualitative Research?

• 7 Types of Qualitative Research

• 6 Types of Qualitative Methods of Research

• Ideas for Analyzing Qualitative Data

What is Qualitative Research?

Qualitative research is any research that provides subjective, non-numerical information. It focuses on people: their experiences, beliefs, and behaviors. It’s generally conducted using observation or unstructured questioning.

Qualitative research is used across many fields and industries, including sales, marketing, health care, education, and social sciences.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research

You likely hear the term “qualitative” used in contrast with “quantitative.”

Quantitative research generates specific numerical data. Its goal is to quantify and generalize the results of a study through numbers, percentages, and statistics. Quantitative research seeks to answer the what, where, when, and who of decision-making.

Qualitative market research, on the other hand, provides insights into the deeper motives behind consumer purchases. Qualitative research answers the why and how.

Why Use Qualitative Research?

Why should your business use qualitative research as opposed to quantitative research?

Well, first of all, you should not use qualitative market research instead of quantitative. The 2 are complementary to each other.

Qualitative research on its own is not conclusive. However, you can use it to:

• Explain quantitative research results.
• Conduct market research when traditional surveys are unavailable. For instance, when your topic involves sensitive or complex questions.
• Conduct market research when more structured research is not possible.

Let’s look at an example of combining quantitative and qualitative research.

For instance, we’ll say that your business wants to conduct research to improve your website.

Quantitative research would give you information such as:

• The number of website visitors
• The length of time users stay on each page
• The number of leads generated from each email signup form
• More quantitative data, such as online shopping statistics and conversion rates

This information is all important data about user behavior. But it doesn’t give you the why behind this behavior.

Qualitative research fills in the rest of the picture with information such as:

• Which parts of your website users find difficult to use
• Whether users find your lightbox popups to be intrusive
• Which special offers and coupon codes shoppers find exciting
• More subjective information about how users view the style, relevance, and usability of your site

A complete website study should include both quantitative and qualitative research. Then, you can improve your website based both on hard numbers and users’ experiences and opinions.

7 Types of Qualitative Research

Qualitative market research collects subjective feedback and observations from consumers and users. However, as with most data collection, it’s much more complicated in practice.

Experts divide qualitative research into 7 main types. These are also sometimes called types of qualitative research designs.

Below, we’ll quickly explain the basics of each qualitative research approach before diving into qualitative research methods you can use for your market research.

Don’t feel like you have to memorize and fully understand all of these approaches. However, reviewing them will give you a good introduction to the field of qualitative research.

1. Phenomenology

Phenomenological research is based on the root word “phenomena.” It seeks to discover how individual people view specific experiences. Phenomenology focuses on lived experiences and individuality instead of generalizations about larger groups.

2. Ethnography

In the ethnography approach, researchers immerse themselves in a specific culture to gain qualitative data through observation and interaction. Ethnographic research provides more in-depth and nuanced information than, say, questionnaires or interviews. This approach also provides data about specific demographics.

3. Grounded Theory

The term “grounded theory” essentially describes the order in which researchers develop a theory.

In most other types of qualitative research, researchers start with a hypothesis and then conduct a study to test that hypothesis. However, researchers using grounded theory begin with qualitative data, such as interviews and observations, and then analyze it to develop a theory. This approach is helpful when you have no working theory for why consumers behave in a certain way.

4. Case Study

Case studies are in-depth examinations of a business, process, product, person, or group of people. They also often include quantitative research, but they become qualitative when they focus on the reasons behind that data and the participants’ individual experiences.

For instance, in our case study of AdamEnfroy.com, we present subjective feedback in addition to quantitative data:

See more examples of OptinMonster’s case study research.

5. Historical Research

The historical approach to research is reasonably self-explanatory. Researchers analyze data from the past to form expectations about the present and future. In qualitative market research, this might mean analyzing consumer feedback from throughout the history of your company or industry.

6. Narrative Research

The narrative approach seeks to tell a story about people’s experiences. Researchers conduct interviews and collect observations over a period of time. Then, they use this information to develop a narrative about the experiences of an individual or small group of people.

7. Action Research

Action research aims to investigate and solve a specific, immediate problem. This type of research is cyclical. Researchers apply an action, analyze the data, draw conclusions, and start again.

Now that you have an overview of the different types of qualitative research, we’ll explore types of qualitative methods of research along with some practical examples.

6 Types of Qualitative Methods of Research

The approaches above are fairly abstract. Now, we’ll share some concrete qualitative methods to collect data for your business. Even beginners and small businesses can use these methodologies.

Here are some of the most common types of qualitative research methods to give you greater insight into your customers. Next time that you are ready to launch a new product or start a new marketing campaign, try out one or more of these methods. You’ll get valuable feedback that will help you succeed.

1. In-Depth Interviews Let You Dig Deep

In-depth interviews (IDIs) are a great way to get detailed consumer feedback. An IDI can be conducted over the phone, in person, or via webcam, using services like Skype or Zoom.

Webcam interviews have become the most common qualitative research method. 34% of researchers report regularly conducting webcam IDIs as 1 of their top 3 data collection methods.

Regardless of your interview method, your IDIs should focus on your ideal user or an existing customer. You ask each person a series of research questions and follow-ups to learn what motivates them to buy a product like yours.

For qualitative research, you should always ask open-ended questions. Avoid simple yes/no questions that provide only quantitative data.

You should go into the interview with some questions prepared, but you shouldn’t stick to a script. If the participant says something interesting, ask follow-up questions that dig deeper.

Here are a few initial questions you could ask:

• What frustrates you about [your topic]?
• If I had a magic wand and could give you the perfect product, what would it look like?
• Have you bought [your type of product] before? If so, what motivated you to buy it?

IDIs provide detailed information about individuals. Therefore, they are especially common in the phenomenology and narrative types of qualitative research.

2. Focus Groups Allow for the Exchange of Ideas

Like IDIs, focus groups can be face-to-face or online. These groups usually involve sample sizes of 6-10 people. They provide a safe and comfortable environment for your users to talk about their thoughts and feelings surrounding your product.

The advantage of in-person focus groups is that you observe the consumer’s verbal and non-verbal reaction to your product or advertising. Group members can also bounce off each other’s thoughts and ideas, which means you’ll get even greater insights.

You can use focus groups to:

• Test a new product or website
• Explore the general concept for your product
• Evaluate your advertising copy and imagery
• Explore new packaging ideas

Online focus groups are similar to in-person ones. They’re more cost-efficient, allow you to include more people, and are less time-consuming to organize. Now that more people are comfortable with Zoom and Skype, online focus groups are more accessible than ever before.

You can also use social media to your advantage. Create a community of people interested in your topic and use it to foster a conversation. Then, observe the dialogue. You’ll gain a lot of interesting insights!

3. Shopping Observations, or “Shop-Alongs,” Give Real-Time Insight

An in-person observation of shopping behavior lets you watch the consumer react to your products in-store. With a shop-along, you get to see consumers’ real-life shopping behavior. Because you see immediate reactions, this method provides different insight than a written survey.

These qualitative studies highlight problems with shelf displays, clutter, or out-of-stock products. You may also interact with consumers to get deeper insights during the shopping process. You can get real-time feedback on package design, for example.

4. In-Home Videos Show Realistic Product Use

In-home videos allow you to observe how users interact with your product in real life, in their own homes.

This research method’s advantage is the setting of the participant observation. You can see your user’s behavior in a natural, comfortable environment. You’ll get a more realistic view of how people use your product.

5. Lifestyle Immersion Lets You Hear Real-World Dialogue

Lifestyle immersion is when you attend an event, such as a party or a family gathering. This research method gives you an uninterrupted view of users’ attitudes and behaviors. Immersion is another excellent way to get candid insight in a comfortable, familiar setting.

During these activities, observe your users having a dialogue with their friends. Listen to these real-world conversations to learn about consumers’ desires, frustrations, and motivations.

6. Journal or Diary Studies for Honest Feedback

Have your user or potential customer keep a journal or a diary to document their experience with your topic or product. Users may be more likely to be completely honest when they’re not face-to-face with an interviewer or moderator.

Journals can be handwritten or digital. Either way, it will capture your user’s voice, which is extremely valuable for optimizing your marketing copy.

3 Tips for Qualitative Data Analysis (to Help You Understand Your Customers)

Using the methods and types of qualitative research discussed above, you can gather excellent information about consumers’ opinions, experiences, and behaviors. The next step is to analyze your data.

Since qualitative data is unstructured, it can be tricky to draw conclusions, let alone present your findings. While qualitative data is not conclusive in and of itself, here are a few tips for analyzing qualitative research data.

“Top 5 Best Survey Data Visualization Tools (In-Depth Comparison)

1. Summarize the Key Points

For interviews and focus groups, have the moderator write up some key points from the discussion. For example: “Common concerns among participants about our pizza were cheese overuse, greasiness, and bland sauce.”

Here is an example of a qualitative summary from a market research project for Pizza Hut Pakistan

2. Code Responses

Coding is the process of organizing and labeling your qualitative data into categories. You can “code” your unstructured data into labels you can summarize with tables or charts.

For example, a researcher might have asked the open-ended question, “How often do you wear a watch?”

Every respondent’s answer would likely be a little different. But you could code them in categories such as:

1. Never
2. Once in a while
3. Frequently
4. Everyday

This process gives you coded data sets to analyze and report.

3. Create a Word Cloud

Create a “word cloud” out of the keywords used by consumers. Put your field notes into a word cloud generator like WordClouds.com. In your cloud, the words that research participants used most often will be the largest. You’ll be able to spot the most prominent words easily.

Use Qualitative Research to Improve Marketing and Sales

You can use these qualitative research types, methods, and analysis strategies to understand your users and customers. Qualitative data collection will help you improve your product development and marketing strategy, leading to more sales and revenue.

If online surveys are part of your research process, check out our survey best practices.

Once you clearly understand your customers, apply what you’ve learned to your email marketing strategy. Using in-depth qualitative data, you’ll generate more leads and sales than ever before.

A lot of businesses make A/B testing mistakes that cost them their time and money, mostly because they don’t know how to run them correctly.

A/B testing is an amazing way to improve your website conversions. At OptinMonster, we have seen many customers use split testing to achieve significant results:

• AtHoc used A/B testing to improve conversions by 25%.
• ChinaImportal used it to grow its email list by 200%.
• Logic Inbound used split tests to increase its conversions by 1500%.

But if you’re making one of the common split testing mistakes listed below, your split tests might be doing more harm than good.

Qubit says that poorly done split tests can cause businesses to invest in unnecessary changes and can even hurt their profits.

The truth is, there’s a lot more to A/B testing than just setting up a test. To succeed with A/B test results, you’ll need to run them the right way and avoid the errors that can undermine your outcomes.

In this post, I’ll share the most common A/B testing mistakes many businesses make so you can avoid them. You’ll also learn how to use split testing the right way so that you can discover the hidden strategies that can skyrocket your conversions.

Let’s get started!

13 Most Common A/B Testing Mistakes You Should Avoid

Here’s the list of topics I’ll cover in this post. You can use this table of contents to click on a topic that you’re most interested in to jump directly to that section:

1. Split Testing the Wrong Page
2. Having an Invalid Hypothesis
3. Split Testing Too Many Items
4. Running Too Many Split Tests at Once
5. Getting the Timing Wrong
6. Working with the Wrong Traffic
7. Testing Too Early
8. Changing Parameters Mid-Test
9. Measuring Results Inaccurately
10. Using Different Display Rules
11. Running Tests on the Wrong Site
12. Giving Up on Split Testing
13. Blindly Following Split Testing Case Studies

1. Split Testing the Wrong Page

One of the biggest problems with A/B testing is running your tests on the wrong pages. It’s important to avoid wasting time and valuable resources with pointless split testing.

But how do you know which pages to test? If you’re marketing a business, the answer is easy: the best pages to test are the ones that make a difference in conversions and sales.

Hubspot suggests that the best pages to test are the ones that get the most traffic, such as:

• Home page
• About page
• Contact page
• Pricing page
• Blog page

Product pages are especially important for eCommerce sites to test because those tests can give you data on how you can improve your sales funnel.

Simply put, if a page isn’t part of your sales or digital marketing strategy, there’s no point testing it. You can prioritize a page for your split testing experiments once you start noticing a spike in organic traffic or an improved engagement rate.

If making a change on a page won’t affect the bottom line, move on. Instead, test a page that’ll give you immediate results.

2. Having an Invalid Hypothesis

A common A/B testing pitfall to avoid is not having a valid hypothesis.

An A/B testing hypothesis is a theory about why you are getting particular results on a web page and how you can improve those results.

Let’s break this down a little more. To form a hypothesis, you’ll need to consider the following steps:

• Step 1: Pay attention to whether people are converting on your site. You’ll get this information from analytics software that tracks and measures what people do on your site. For example, it’ll tell you which call to action (CTA) buttons are getting more click-throughs, if people are signing up for your newsletter, or which product is selling the most.
• Step 2: Make calculated guesses about why certain behaviors are happening. For example, if people are landing on your site but aren’t downloading a lead magnet, or if your checkout page has a high bounce rate, then perhaps your CTA is to blame.
• Step 3: Come up with possible ideas that can lead to desirable user behavior. For example, in the above scenario, you can create multiple versions of CTAs to improve your lead magnet downloads.
• Step 4: Figure out how you will measure the success of the test. This is an essential part of a successful A/B testing hypothesis.

Here’s how you can work it out in a real-life scenario:

• Observation: There’s good traffic to our lead magnet landing page, but the conversion is low. Most visitors to the page aren’t downloading the lead magnet.
• Possible reasons: The low conversion rates might be because the existing CTA isn’t clear and compelling enough.
• Suggested fix: We’ll change the CTA button colors and texts to make it more compelling and visually pleasing.
• Measurement: We’ll know we’re right if we increase sign-ups by 10% in a 1-month period from the test launch date.

Note that you need all the elements for a valid hypothesis: observing data, speculating about reasons, coming up with a theory for how to fix it, and measuring results after implementing a fix.

If the test doesn’t yield satisfactory results, that means one of the variables was wrong. To succeed, you’ll need to change it and iterate the experiment until you get a conclusive result.

3. Split Testing Too Many Items

Here’s another common mistake in A/B testing that many marketers make: trying to test too many items at once.

It might seem like testing multiple page elements at once saves time, but it doesn’t. What happens is that you’ll never know which change is responsible for the improved (or poor) results.

Good split testing involves changing one item on a page and testing it against another version of the same item.

The minute you change more than one item at a time, you need a multivariate test. A multivariate test lets you compare more than 2 variations of a campaign at a time.

You can read more about it in detail in our comparison of split testing versus multivariate testing.

Here’s a simple visual explanation of how a multivariate test works:

Multivariate testing is a great way to test a website redesign where you have to change lots of page elements. But you can end up with a lot of combinations to test, and that takes time you might not want to invest.

Multivariate testing also only works well for high-traffic sites and pages. In most cases, however, a simple split test will get you the most meaningful results.

4. Running Too Many Split Tests at Once

When it comes to running A/B tests, it’s important to keep things simple.

While it’s perfectly fine to run multiple split tests, it’s not advisable to run more than 4 split tests at a time.

For example, you can get meaningful results by testing 3 different versions of your CTA button. Running these tests isn’t the same as multivariate testing, because you’re still only changing a single item for each test.

But the more variations you run, the bigger the A/B testing sample size you need. That’s because you have to send more traffic to each version to get reliable results.

This is known as A/B testing statistical significance. In simple terms, it means making sure the numbers are large enough to actually have meaning.

You can check if you have a good enough sample size for your tests with the tools mentioned in our split testing guide.

5. Getting the Timing Wrong

Timing is everything with A/B testing. But there are a couple of classic mistakes people make related to running a split test at the wrong time.

Comparing Different Time Periods

Let’s understand this with an example. If a page gets most of its traffic on Wednesdays, it doesn’t make sense to compare the test results for that day with the results on a low-traffic day.

This is an important point to remember if you’re an eCommerce retailer. That’s because it can be misleading to compare your test results from Thanksgiving or Christmas with the results you get during January’s sales slump.

It’s also important to pay attention to external factors that might affect your split testing results. If you’re marketing locally and natural disasters cause disruptions in people’s lives, you won’t get the results you expect.

Similarly, winter-related offers just won’t have the same impact during summer months, according to Small Business Sense.

In any case, you shouldn’t compare apples to oranges if you want reliable results. Instead, run your tests for comparable periods so you can accurately assess whether any change yields different outcomes.

Not Running a Test for Long Enough

You need to run an A/B test for a certain amount of time to achieve statistical significance.

As an example, you should aim to get a 95% confidence rating in your results as an industry standard. That means you can be sure about accurate results and base your decision-making on the findings.

The test duration can vary depending on the number of variants and the expected conversions. For instance, if you’re running 2 variants and expect 50 conversions, your testing period will be shorter than if you have 4 variants and are looking for 200 conversions.

Want to check if you have achieved statistical significance in your A/B tests? Head over to Visual Website Optimizer (VWO)’s Statistical Significance Calculator page.

The page allows you to enter the number of visitors and conversions for your test so that it can calculate the statistical significance.

Testing Different Time Delays

When you’re running split tests with OptinMonster, your campaign’s timing can affect the success of your tests. One of the frequent mistakes I see people make in their tests is that they compare 2 different campaigns with different time delays.

For example, if a popup campaign appears after visitors have been on a landing page for 5 seconds, and another shows up after 20 seconds, that’s not a fair comparison.

That’s because you’re not comparing similar audiences. Typically, a lot more people will spend 5 seconds on a page than 20 seconds.

As a result, you’ll see different impressions for each campaign. And the results won’t make sense or be useful to you.

For a true split test, you have to change 1 item on the page, not the timing. But if you want to experiment with timing your optins, this article on popups, welcome gates, and slide-in campaigns has some great suggestions.

6. Working With the Wrong Traffic

To get meaningful results out of your A/B tests, it’s important that your site drives a healthy amount of traffic to its pages.

If you have a high-traffic site, you can complete split tests relatively fast because of the constant flow of visitors to your site.

But if you have a low-traffic site or sporadic visits, you’ll need to run the test for longer.

It’s also important to split your traffic the right way so you really are testing like against like. Some A/B testing tools allow you to manually allocate the traffic you are using for the test.

But it’s much easier to split traffic automatically to avoid the possibility of getting unreliable results from the wrong kind of split.

If you’re using OptinMonster’s A/B testing functionality, it’s easy to get this right. That’s because OptinMonster automatically segments your traffic according to the number of tests you’re running:

7. Testing Too Early

Testing too soon is a recipe for failure in A/B testing and can cloud your marketing judgment.

For example, if you start a new OptinMonster campaign, you should wait a bit before starting a split test.

That’s because there’s no point in creating a split test when you don’t have enough data to compare. When you rush to test brand-new pages, you’ll essentially be testing against nothing, which is a waste of time.

As a rule of thumb, run your new campaigns for at least a week and see how they perform before you start tweaking and testing.

Like I mentioned earlier in tip #5, the more conversions you want, the longer your test duration should be.

8. Changing Parameters Mid-Test

If you want to mess up your A/B testing outcome, change your testing parameters or variables in the middle of the experiment.

This mistake usually happens if you:

• Decide to change the amount of web traffic that sees the control or the variation.
• Add new variables or change the existing ones before the test ends.
• Alter your split testing goals.

Sudden changes invalidate your test and skew your results.

If you absolutely need to change something, then start your test again, or create a new one. It’s the best way to get results you can rely on.

9. Measuring Results Inaccurately

Measuring results correctly is as important as testing accurately. Yet, it’s another area for marketers to make costly A/B testing mistakes.

If you don’t measure results properly, you can’t rely on your data. This means you can’t make data-driven decisions and finetune your marketing campaigns for better results.

One of the best ways to solve this is to ensure that your A/B testing solution works with Google Analytics. That way, you’ll have better control over understanding your test results and actionable insights on what to do next.

OptinMonster integrates with Google Analytics, so you can see accurate data about traffic and conversions in your dashboard:

Here’s how you integrate Google Analytics with OptinMonster so you can get real-time, actionable data points. You can also set up your own Google Analytics dashboard to collect campaign data with the rest of your web metrics.

10. Using Different Display Rules

Display rules, in the context of marketing campaigns, are a set of conditions that let you control where and how your campaigns appear to visitors on your site.

OptinMonster has powerful display rules that control which campaigns show when, where, or based on specific user behaviors. These rules can include parameters such as:

• If someone is visiting your site for the first time.
• If they are returning visitors.
• The time they spend on a page.
• Certain pages they visit on your site.
• The devices they are using to visit your site.
• Their intention to leave a page.
• Their geographical location.
• The length of a page they have scrolled on your site.
• The amount of time they are inactive on a page.
• If they have added a product to their shopping carts.
• If they have already seen or interacted with an existing campaign.

Just like you shouldn’t randomly change your testing parameters midway through a test, making arbitrary changes to the display rules can ruin your test outcomes.

Like I said earlier, split tests are about changing one element on the page. If you change the display rules so that one optin shows to people in the UK and another to people in the US, that’s not an apples-to-apples comparison.

If one campaign is a fullscreen welcome mat, and another is an Exit-Intent® campaign, you’re setting up your test for failure. If one campaign shows up at 9 am and the other at 9 pm, you might get false positives that can jeopardize your marketing efforts in the future.

For more information, check out our guide to using Display Rules with OptinMonster. This will help you set rules for who to target your campaigns at, where, and at what time.

11. Running Tests on the Wrong Site

This is one of the silliest A/B testing mistakes marketers fall for. Many of them test their marketing campaigns on a development site, which is not so bad by itself.

What’s worse is that sometimes they forget to move their chosen campaigns over to the live site and they see that their split tests aren’t working.

This is bad because the only people who visit a development site are web developers, not customers. Luckily, making the switch is an easy fix. If you’re not seeing positive results, it’s worth checking for this issue.

If you’re using OptinMonster, here’s how you fix this issue:

Step 1: Log in to the OptinMonster dashboard, and click on your profile icon at the top-right of the screen. From the dropdown menu, click on My Account:

Go to Sites from the top menu:

Choose the site you want to change and click Edit:

Change the website URL from the dev site to the live site:

Once you’re done, scroll down to the page’s bottom to save your changes:

And that’s it!

To learn more, read our help doc on how to add, delete, or edit a website in OptinMonster.

12. Giving Up on Split Testing

Some brands keep testing their sites, which means they are always running conversion rate optimization (CRO) tests to improve their site’s user experience (UX). Others, not so much.

One of the A/B testing mistakes you must avoid is ending your test prematurely. For example, don’t stop your test before the 1-week time window that I mentioned earlier. You should also not stop a test halfway through assuming it has failed or if it’s not giving you the desired results.

Quitting on a test too soon is a terrible error because it won’t get optimization benefits.

It’s important to know that there’s no such thing as a failed split test because the goal of a test is to gather data.

You can learn something from an experiment even if it doesn’t yield the outcomes you expected. Plus, the data you’ll discover might help you fine-tune your next experiment.

You should also go with what the data says rather than relying on your gut feeling, also known as confirmation bias. You can always run a new test at the end of the testing period to see if different changes will achieve the results that you hoped for.

Also, don’t stop the test abruptly if you haven’t had enough time to get a decent sample size or achieve statistical significance and a 95% confidence rating. Otherwise, you’ll waste your time.

13. Blindly Following Split Testing Case Studies

It’s great to read case studies and learn about the split testing techniques that have worked for different companies.

But one A/B testing mistake you must avoid is copying what worked for others.

If that seems counterintuitive, hear me out.

It’s fine to use case studies to get ideas for how and what to test. But be aware that what worked for another business might not work for yours, because every business is unique.

Instead, use A/B testing case studies as a point of reference for creating your own A/B testing strategy. That’ll let you see what works best for your own target audience, not someone else’s.

Put Your A/B Tests to Good Use

Now you know the most common A/B testing mistakes that can waste your time and marketing efforts, you can get your split testing off to a good start.

If you liked this post, you might be interested in more resources related to A/B testing:

• What Is Split Testing? Best Split Testing Tools & Strategies
• Handpicked A/B Testing Examples to Get You More Conversions
• How to Split Test Email Campaigns the RIGHT Way [Ultimate Guide]

OptinMonster makes it really easy to split test your marketing campaigns so you can get better results.

Want to see how easy (and error-free) it is to create and test your campaigns? Sign up with OptinMonster today!

A/B tests let you assess different versions of a webpage, email, or marketing campaign, and then you can fully launch the version that performs the best. With thorough testing, you can be confident that every aspect of your marketing funnel is optimized to get the most clicks and conversions.

A/B tests are an essential optimization practice for any digital marketing professional. But “essential” definitely doesn’t mean “easy.”

Fortunately, this guide will help you learn to A/B test like a pro! I’m going to cover everything you need to know about A/B testing, including the definition, types, elements, and steps for this vital strategy.

Let’s get started!

• What Is A/B Testing?
• How Does an A/B Test Work?
• What Elements Can You A/B Test?
• Benefits of A/B Testing
• Best Practices for A/B Testing
• How to A/B Test An Optin Campaign

What Is A/B Testing?

A/B testing is a marketing methodology used to compare 2 versions of a web page, email, or other digital content. Each version is shown to a sample size of the target audience. The purpose is to determine which version performs the best, based on pre-determined metrics.

A/B testing is also often called split testing because the audience is split between the 2 different versions.

How Does an A/B Test Work?

When you A/B test content on your website, you create 2 versions of the same page:

1. Version A
2. Version B

Hence the name “A/B test.”

Version A is the page as you initially designed it. Version B is a copy of Version A, but with 1 element changed.

You’ll sometimes see Version A called the “control” or “baseline,” and Version B called the “variation”

Let’s say that your changed element is the color of your call-to-action (CTA) button. You want to test which color causes more website visitors to click your CTA.

When you start your A/B test, 50% of your website visitors will see Version A, which has a green button. The other 50% will see Version B, which has a red button.

You’ll then be able to monitor how your 2 variants perform.

Let’s say that your results are as follows:

• 40% of visitors seeing Version A click the CTA button
• 60% of visitors seeing Version B click the CTA button

The CTA color in Version B is clearly more enticing to visitors, as it performed 50% better in the test. You can end your A/B test and use Version B for all visitors.

You can also use this information to A/B test that color on various pages on your website. It could help you decide to make that the primary CTA color for your brand.

Note that for email marketing, A/B split tests work a bit differently. After all, emails don’t receive organic traffic. Instead, you have to send them to your subscribers.

In an email marketing A/B test, Versions A and B are each sent to a small percentage of the list or segment you plan to target. You’ll then send the version that performs the best to your full audience.

What Elements Can You A/B Test?

What type of elements can you alter for Version B of your split tests?

Here are some examples of what to A/B test on your website:

Let’s discuss each element a bit further:

• Headlines & subheadings: Run tests to determine which heading best captures your users’ attention. In addition to the wording, you can try different variations of fonts and sizes.
• Copy: Optimize your paragraph copy to better direct users to your CTA. For instance, you can test variations of different word lengths. Do your users prefer a detailed explanation or copy that is more concise?
• Form design: Ensure your registration, feedback, and email signup forms are designed to encourage users to complete the process. A/B testing helps you discover any frustrating elements that are causing users to abandon your form.
• Call-to-Action (CTA): Test the button color, button size, and copy on your CTAs. Which variant stands out more?
• Images: Discover which photos and graphics are more evocative and drive more action.
• Colors: Test different overall color schemes or the color of specific elements.

With all of these elements tested, you’ll be ready to make more data-driven decisions throughout your website and on your standalone landing pages.

You can A/B test all of the above elements within your email campaigns, as well. You can test variants to see which ones result in higher click-through rates.

However, you need your subscribers to open your emails in the first place. That’s why email marketing presents some additional elements to test:

• Email subject lines: Which subject line best catches your subscribers’ attention?
• Sender Names: Should you simply use your brand’s name, or should you go with something like “Angie at OptinMonster?”
• Preview/preheader text: Which extra bit of information will convince subscribers to open your email?

Testing these email elements can help you improve your email open rates, so more subscribers will see your offers, product promotions, and CTAs.

Benefits of A/B Testing

Now that you understand the A/B testing definition and the basics of how the method works, I’ll answer the most important question:

Why should you use A/B testing?

Let’s take a look at some of the top benefits.

Grow Your Email List

Email marketing is one of the most effective digital marketing strategies, with an average ROI (return on investment) of 36:1. If you want to see this kind of success, you need a strong email list full of engaged leads.

A/B tested optin campaigns let you improve the conversion rates on your email signup forms.

With OptinMonster, you can run A/B split tests with just a few clicks!

OptinMonster is the best lead generation software on the market. We help you collect email addresses and other user data through lightbox popups, floating bars, inline forms, and other onsite marketing campaigns.

Here’s an example of one of our popup templates, designed to offer a Mother’s Day coupon in exchange for the user’s name and email address:

OptinMonster offers easy split testing functionality. With a single click in our dashboard, you can create a Version B of your campaign, which you can edit in our easy drag-and-drop builder.

OptinMonster will then run an A/B split test of your 2 versions, so you can see which variant persuades more visitors to sign up for your email list.

In mere minutes, you can start an experiment to test elements of your optin campaigns.

Does this type of A/B testing make a difference?

Logic Inbound, a digital marketing agency, increased conversions by 1500% by split testing their OptinMonster campaigns.

Get More Email Engagement

You worked hard to build your email list. Now you can use A/B testing to keep your subscribers engaged:

• Get more opens: Test your subject line, sender name, and preview text.
• Get more clicks: Test the images, heading, text, and CTAs in your email message. Which variants help you drive more traffic to your website or landing pages?
• Reduce unsubscribes: Engaged subscribers are less likely to opt out of your list, so testing will help this metric, too.

Drive More eCommerce Sales

A/B testing is vital to optimizing your sales flow. Are your product pages and checkout pages fully optimized to encourage purchases?

For instance, here are a few important examples of what to A/B test on your product pages:

• Product photos
• Product names and descriptions
• Featured testimonials and other social proof
• “Add to Cart” and “Buy Now” buttons
• Design and layout of product pages
• Recommended products

By optimizing these elements, you can increase your revenue and grow your business. The A/B testing process provides hard data on how to best persuade online shoppers to buy.

Related ResourceThe Ultimate eCommerce Optimization Guide: 13 Steps to Instantly Boost Revenue

Keep Visitors on Your Website Longer

Once you attract visitors to your website, your next goal is to keep them on your site long enough to read your content or make a purchase. In other words, you want to reduce your bounce rate. That’s the number of visitors who land on one of your web pages but leave without taking any action at all.

A/B tests can help you pinpoint how to keep visitors engaged. For instance, you can test the placement and visibility of your featured content and product recommendations. You can also test which related content you should feature on each page.

For instance, Olyplant used an OptinMonster popup to suggest related content to visitors who found their site through Google.  This strategy helped them increase average page views per session by 157%!

Improve User Experience (UX)

A/B testing lets you improve conversion rates quickly. But it also has bigger long-term effects.

Over time, you’ll optimize each part of your website and email marketing. You’ll improve every stage of the customer journey, eliminating pain points along the way.

The result: a top-notch customer experience that will keep readers and customers coming back time and time again.

Best Practices for A/B Testing

Before you dive into your A/B testing, let’s cover some basic tips and best practices, so you can guarantee that you get useful and accurate data during your testing.

1. Test the Right Items
2. Pay Attention to Sample Size & Statistical Significance
3. Get Your Hypothesis Right
4. Schedule Your Tests Correctly
5. Nail Your Test Duration
6. Don’t Make Mid-Test Changes
7. Test 1 Element at a Time
8. Pay Attention to the Data
9. Test Continuously

1. Test the Right Items

If you’re new to A/B testing, you may be be overwhelmed at all the possible pages and elements you could test.

Digital marketing expert Neil Patel suggests you optimize the pages people visit most, which are often:

• Home page
• About page
• Contact page
• Blog page

Of course, your top-visited pages can sometimes surprise you. Be sure to check your Google Analytics to discover other pages that get the most visitors, and prioritize A/B testing those pages.

Or you may want to focus on your key lead generation pages. That means optimizing optin forms on your:

• Webinar signup page
• Ebook landing page
• Lead magnet page

2. Pay Attention to Sample Size and Statistical Significance

Another best practice for A/B testing is to get the sample size right. If you don’t perform your test on enough people, you won’t get reliable results.

For instance, you might A/B test 2 versions of the form on your “Contact Us” page. You let your test run for a week, and Version A performs 20% better than Version B.

However, if each version only got 13 visitors during that time, then you actually don’t have enough data because your test sample is too small. Just 1 or 2 people filling out Version A is enough to completely sway your results.

In other words, your A/B test results wouldn’t be statistically significant.

Hubspot offers a downloadable Significance Calculator, an A/B testing tool to determine whether you have statistically significant results.

Note that you must provide an email address and other optin information to download Hubspot’s Significance Calculator.

Another option is Visual Website Optimizer’s (VWO) statistical significance tool.

Type in the number of visitors you’ve tested for Version A (called the control) and for Version B (called the variation). Then press the Calculate Significance button:

You’ll get a result that shows the P-value, which is  a measure of reliability. The calculator will also tell you whether the test has statistical significance by showing Yes or No:

If you get a Yes, congrats! If you get a No, you may need to extend your test to get more data. Alternatively, you may discover that there is no significant difference between the performance of your 2 versions.

The takeaway? Don’t rush your A/B split tests. Be patient and wait until you have enough data to make a decision.

3. Get Your Hypothesis Right

A/B tests don’t just let you compare variants. They let you test hypotheses about what you think your audience will respond best to.

When you start testing anything without a hypothesis, you’re going in blind.

In split testing, a hypothesis is an idea about what you need to test, why it needs to be tested, and what changes you’ll see after you make any changes.

With this structure in place, you’ll know the scope of your test and when it succeeds or fails. Without it, your testing is nothing more than guesswork.

To form a hypothesis, use this template from Digital Marketer:

Because we observed [A] and feedback [B], we believe that changing [C] for visitors [D] will make [E] happen. We’ll know this when we see [F] and obtain [G].

Here’s  an example of how you could fill this in for your email newsletter optin form:

Because we observed a poor conversion rate [A] and visitors reported that our optin form was too long [B], we believe that reducing the number of form fields [C] for all visitors [D] will increase newsletter signups [E].

We’ll know this when we see an increase in newsletter signups over a 2 week testing period [F] and get customer feedback that shows that people think the optin form is less complicated [G].

Read that example carefully (twice if you have to!) and create a hypothesis of your own with this structure.

4. Schedule Your Tests Correctly

Test scheduling is one of the most crucial A/B testing best practices.

Most online businesses have predictable peak times, as well as slower periods. For instance, testing your traffic over Black Friday and comparing it to a regular Tuesday in February probably won’t give you the most reliable data.

If you want to optimize your website for regular day-to-day traffic, make sure you run your test during a time of average traffic and user engagement. If you want to optimize your more specialized landing pages and offers, time your tests so you get the most relevant data possible.

5. Nail Your Test Duration

Test duration is another essential factor in determining the reliability of your results. As I’ve mentioned, you have to run your test for long enough to get statistically significant data.

If you want an idea of how long your website A/B test needs to run, you can use this handy test duration calculator from VWO.

Note that VWO’s calculator asks for the number of variations you’re testing. That’s because this calculator can also be used for multivariate testing, a more complex type of test that compares more than 2 versions of a webpage.

We’ll discuss multivariate testing a bit more in tip #7.

6. Don’t Make Mid-Test Changes

It’s easy to get so excited about the results you’re seeing during a test. You may even want to rush out and implement more changes.

Don’t do it.

Your results won’t be reliable if you interrupt the test before the end of the ideal testing period. Or if you introduce new elements that weren’t part of your original hypothesis.

When you make more changes during your testing period, you’ll have no idea which change is actually responsible for any lift in conversions.

Instead, set a date to run your test and stay strong. Just sit tight, wait for the results to come in, and take action after the test has finished.

7. Test 1 Element at a Time

A golden rule of A/B testing is to test 1 element at a time.

If you’re testing an optin form for marketing, you should test for changes in the headline, image, call to action, OR number of form fields.

Again, notice the emphasis on “or” rather than “and.” It should just be 1.

This is the only way you’ll know for sure if there is ONE element that makes a difference in your lead conversions.

Here’s an example of a simple A/B test that one of our clients, the American Bird Conservancy, used to improve conversions on a popup campaign.

They tested 2 versions of the same popup. The only thing that was different was the featured image.

This version of the popup won the A/B test:

Because they tested the popup, they got an excellent conversion rate of 3.99% on this campaign.

Case StudyLearn how the American Bird Conservancy increased their lead collection by 1000% with OptinMonster!

If you test more than one element, then you need multivariate testing. We explain the difference in our guide to split testing vs. multivariate testing.

Multivariate testing is a much more complex process. You shouldn’t tackle this advanced method until you’ve mastered A/B testing.

8. Pay Attention to the Data

We’ve all got gut feelings about how our marketing will perform. However, a gut feeling doesn’t mean much if it’s not backed by data.  A/B testing gives you that data to either back up your instinct or to show that you’re wrong.

Never ignore the data in favor of your gut. If you’ve followed our advice on how to create split tests, you’ll get reliable data that’ll help you to improve conversions.

9. Test Continuously

Our last tip is to always be testing something on your site or in your emails. The more elements you test over time, the more you’ll be able to optimize every aspect of your digital marketing.

Incremental changes can soon add up, as many OptinMonster customers have found. Escola EDTI used split testing to get a 500% boost in conversions:

And as we briefly mentioned earlier, Logic Inbound got a whopping 1500% conversion boost by split testing its OptinMonster marketing campaigns:

A 1500% conversion boost is no small accomplishment! And it was made possible through simple A/B testing.

How to A/B Split Test Your Optin Campaigns

Want to A/B test your own marketing campaigns so you can aim for similar results? Get started with the A/B testing tool that’s built into OptinMonster.

First, you’ll follow our instructions to create and publish your first campaign.

Once you have a campaign you’re happy with, you’re ready to run a split test. From the OptinMonster dashboard, click the campaign you want to work on:

Select the Create Split Test icon. It looks like an arrow that’s splitting into 2 directions.

This will bring up a box where you can name your test and add some notes about the change you plan to make.

When you’ve given your campaign duplicate a name and added some notes, click Create Split Test:

Then you’ll be in your campaign builder. Now you can make changes to your campaign with OptinMonster’s easy-to-use editing tools.

When you’re finished, save and publish the campaign as normal:

OptinMonster will automatically split your audience and collect conversion data, which you will see in the conversion analytics dashboard:

After enough time has passed for your test, you’ll be able to see which campaign converted more leads.

Then you can return to your OptinMonster dashboard and click on the campaign you A/B tested. You’ll see the original campaign and, when you scroll down, you’ll see the duplicate campaign you used for split testing.

Select Make Primary for the campaign that is getting the best results:

Here is how that looks:

And that’s it!

Now that you have an overview of A/B testing, you understand why it’s one of the best tools available for conversion rate optimization.

If you’re ready to start split testing your onsite marketing campaigns, OptinMonster makes it a breeze!

Want to A/B test more elements across your website? Google recently sunset its testing tool, Google Optimize, but there are plenty of other options available.

Check out WPBeginner’s list of 9 Best Google Optimize Alternatives (Free and Paid) to learn about the best A/B testing software options.

With the right software and the information in this guide, you’ll be ready to start improving every aspect of your digital marketing.

Related Resources

• 60 A/B Testing Examples to Get You More Conversions
• 13 A/B Testing Mistakes That Are Wasting Your Time
• How to Split Test Email Campaigns the RIGHT Way

Google Analytics can be one of your company’s best assets. The real-time data you collect from the free platform helps you optimize your digital marketing best practices, learn more about your audience, and refine your sales funnel.

In other words, the type of knowledge you get through Google Analytics isn’t just power; it’s profit.

That’s why, in this blog, we will look at the best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress. Here’s the list of tools we’ll be looking at:

1. MonsterInsights
2. ExactMetrics
3. Analytify
4. Conversios
5. GA Google Analytics
6. WP Statistics 
7. WP Google Analytics Events

But first, let’s clarify how a Google Analytics plugin can make your life much easier.

Let’s get started.

Why Do You Need a Google Analytics Plugin?

Google Analytics is a great source of data to grow your business, but it isn’t known for its user-friendly interface. That can lead to marketers sifting through pages of data looking for the information they need about their website traffic.

But there’s an easier way.

With a Google Analytics plugin, you’ll be able to:

• Know where your referral traffic comes from. When you know where your referral traffic is coming from, you know where to invest your marketing dollars.
• Segment your audience. You can create specific campaigns to target specific segments of your audience when you know more about who your audience is.
• Track the effectiveness of your campaigns. Keep track of how your campaigns are performing with advanced reporting.
• Create and track conversion goals. Google Analytics allows you to create and track custom conversion goals so you can track each stage in the customer journey.
• Analyze and improve your content marketing. With Google Analytics, you can find out what keywords you’re ranking for and what content is working for you.

And that’s just the beginning of what you can do with an analytics plugin on your WordPress website. Plus you can do all of this right from your WordPress dashboard.

Can you use Google Analytics without a plugin? Yes. Does a plugin make it a billion times easier? YES.

If you’ve never used plugins before, check out this step by step guide to installing a WordPress plugin.

You can probably see why we’re so excited about sharing these plugins with you, so let’s dive into our picks!

Best Google Analytics Plugins for WordPress

1. MonsterInsights

MonsterInsights Pricing: Starts at $99.50/year

MonsterInsights is the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress. It allows you to easily add Google Analytics to your site, and you can access your reports right from your WordPress dashboard.

The MonsterInsights plugin makes it effortless to set up even the most advanced Google Analytics features in WordPress in just a few clicks. As you might imagine, it works behind the scenes and won’t affect any WordPress theme you’re using on the front-end.

No coding is necessary and no developers are needed, making it the ideal solution for small businesses on a budget.

With the built-in Google Analytics dashboard, you don’t even have to leave WordPress to get useful visitor information, like your best traffic sources, top-ranking articles, site pageviews, outbound links, and much more.

MonsterInsights works with Universal Analytics and the newest version of Google’s analytics platform, Google Analytics 4 (GA4). You connect to whatever version you’re running, or you can connect to both versions at the same time with MonsterInsights’ Dual Tracking feature.

The plugin also comes with several addons that extend the functionality of the plugin and make it even more useful.

Google Analytics Enhanced eCommerce tracking for WooCommerce, Google Search Console, Easy Digital Downloads, and MemberPress let you track things like conversion rate, keyword rankings, transactions, and average order value with a single click.

The EU Compliance addon makes it easy to comply with data protection laws. It also comes with a Forms addon that lets you easily track form views, submissions, and form conversion rates.

Why MonsterInsights is One of the Best Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress

We really love MonsterInsights because it’s simple to use but comes packed with advanced features.

It’s perfect for staying on top of your key SEO metrics, seeing how users are engaging with your social media accounts, link tracking, tracking custom events (like active installs and form submissions), and much more.

These real-time stats will help you improve your marketing strategy and generate more sales from your website. You can also get email reports sent to your inbox so you can stay “in-the-know” at all times.

That makes MonsterInsights the best WordPress Google Analytics reports plugin on the market.

Plus, it’ll walk you step-by-step through how to install Google Analytics if you’re just starting out. In other words, it’s ridiculously simple to configure.

And if you ever get stuck, there are tons of resources including documentation, tutorials, blog posts, and help tickets.

Get started with MonsterInsights today!

2. ExactMetrics

ExactMetrics Pricing: Starts at $99.50/year

Next up in our list of the best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress is ExactMetrics.

This plugin allows users to easily install the latest Google Analytics tracking code into their site’s header to view reports directly in their WordPress admin area. These Google Analytics reports include important information like:

• Sessions and pageviews
• Organic searches
• Bounce rates
• Referrers
• 404 errors
• Traffic channels

Additionally, the Google Analytics tracking ID is fully customizable which allows for advanced data collection like events (downloads, page scrolling length, etc.) and custom dimensions (author, publication year, etc.).

ExactMetrics is the best way to quickly see spikes and surges in your WordPress website traffic. It’s very simple to configure and easy to read the results straight in WordPress.

Give ExactMetrics a try today!

3. Analytify

Analytify Pricing: Free core version, premium plans start at $75/year

Analytify rounds out the top 3 in our list of best Google Analytics plugins for WordPress. It offers super easy installation and just like MonsterInsights, lets you view your Google Analytics reports right inside your WordPress admin area.

You can also get page-level analytics for every page and post, as well as detailed stats for your custom post types, like portfolios, galleries, and testimonials.

You will need addons for some features, though, like getting email notifications with your reports.

There’s also a Campaigns addon to track individual campaigns using UTM (Urchin Tracking Module) parameters.

Do your due diligence in researching this plugin, though. There have been some negative reviews concerning glitches, bugs, and too many ads in their free version.

This might just be a few exceptions by vocal reviewers, but it’s always worth looking into before using ANY WordPress Google Analytics reports plugins.

Get started with Analytify today!

4. Conversios

Conversios Pricing: Free

WordPress.org Rating: 4.5/5 stars, 183 reviews

If you’re looking for a Google Analytics plugin to track your WooCommerce store, this free WordPress plugin might just be the plugin for you.

Conversios uses the eCommerce tracking feature of Google Analytics to help you optimize your online store based on the data collected from visitor behavior. The plugin supports all the in-depth reporting the Google Analytics offers, as well as 4 new reports included in Conversios:

• Shopping Behavior
• Checkout Behavior
• Product Performance
• Sales Performance

This plugin also helps you capture a ton of site behavior that will help you understand how visitors are browsing and shopping your site.

Conversios does come with limitations, of course. For starters, it only supports simple products, highly customized stores, subscription products, short codes, or child themes.

The only downside is that there have been reports of this plugin deleting its settings which can cause major headaches for website owners.

Give Conversios a try today!

5. GA Google Analytics

GA Google Analytics Pricing: Free core version, premium plans start at $15/year

Are you looking for a lightweight Google Analytics plugin that simply does the work of connecting your WordPress site to Google Analytics?

GA Google Analytics is GDPR compliant and enables the Google Analytics tracking code on all the pages of your WordPress site. You can even disable the tracking of admin-level users so your data isn’t skewed by the people who are on your site for work-related reasons.

As far as features go, however, that’s about it for this plugin. To get additional features, you’ll have to upgrade to the pro version of this plugin. This Google Analytics plugin is designed for simplicity and it delivers.

To access your Google Analytics data and reports, you’ll have to log in to your Google Analytics account.

So while this WordPress Google Analytics reports plugin may not have as much power as an alternative (like MonsterInsights), it might be the perfect place for you to get started.

Click here to get started with GA Google Analytics!

6. WP Statistics

WP Statistics Pricing: Free core version, add-ons start at $119/year

WP Statistics is a free/freemium, easy-to-install WordPress analytics plugin that shows stats and simple graphs inside your WordPress dashboard.

You can track visitor data like IP address, referring site, browser, operating system, country, and city, as well as track redirects from search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and more.

WP Statistics also supports WordPress roles and lets you set access levels to view and manage analytics. Additionally, you can export your analytics data to XML, CSV, or TSV files and WP Statistics also can send an email statistics summary with customizable text.

A downside of this plugin is that it stores the data on your WordPress site. Over time, this may increase your backup size.

Also, there are lots of negative reviews that discuss how the plugin led to irreversible errors. Be sure to always have a backup version of your site ready to go when testing new plugins.

Get started with WP Statistics today!

7. WP Google Analytics Events

WP Google Analytics Events Pricing: Free core version, pro upgrade starts at $79/year

WP Google Analytics Events make it super easy to send events to Google Analytics when WordPress users scroll to a specific point of interest on your site or they click certain elements (like buttons or Ajax submit forms).

And the best part is that there’s no coding required.

Event tracking in Google Analytics is incredibly powerful and useful for understanding what actions your website visitors take while on your site Here are just a few things you could do with the WP Google Analytics Events plugin:

• Track in-page navigation
• Compare call-to-action button performance
• Understand what percentage of your site visitors read to the end of a post
• Track contact form conversions

If you’re a fan of using videos in your posts, you should check out the premium version of the plugin that lets you create events to track video views, pauses, and completions. Pretty cool, right?

It’s important to remember that this plugin is only for event tracking, so you’ll still need another option to track your site stats and demographics.

Get started with WP Google Analytics Events today!

Bonus: Site Kit by Google

No list of Google Analytics plugins would be complete without mentioning Site Kit. It’s free and open-source, plus it’s made by Google itself.

However, it’s not our top recommendation for a few reasons.

Site Kit doesn’t give particularly detailed reports in WordPress. You have to go into Google Analytics to see the most useful information.

It’s also hard to stay compliant with GDPR when using Site Kit. You have to manually anonymize IP addresses and disable tracking, which is a pain.

That’s it for our top picks for best Google Analytics WordPress plugins, so now it’s time to pick a winner, right? Drumroll, please:

What Is the Best Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress?

MonsterInsights is the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.

Out of all the top Google Analytics plugin for WordPress we viewed, only MonsterInsights offers an incredible selection of features at an affordable price. Plus, it’s backed by an awesome team that works hard to keep the plugin updated, and the software behind it constantly improving.

Plus, it lets you do everything you need to do from the comfort of your WordPress dashboard.

If you’re looking for the best free Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, we highly recommend ExactMetrics.

We hope this article about the best analytics plugin for WordPress was exactly what you were looking for! If you enjoyed this article, you might find these resources helpful:

• 11 Best Website Welcome Message Examples to Greet Your Users
• How to Use Google Analytics to Discover Ideas for Lead Magnets
• Google Analytics 101: How to Track Your Conversions (Step-by-Step)

And, don’t forget that OptinMonster is the #1 conversion software in the world. Whatever your goals are, we get you there. Get started with OptinMonster today!

In the world digital marketing, every touchpoint with your audience matters. One often overlooked yet crucial touchpoint is the “thank you page.”

It’s not just a digital nod of appreciation; it’s a golden opportunity to enhance user experience and solidify customer loyalty.

Let’s explore its significance and draw inspiration from some stellar thank you page examples.

Why Every Business Needs a Thank You Page

• First Impressions Matter: The thank you page sets the tone for future interactions. A positive experience can lead to increased customer loyalty.
• Building Trust: A personalized thank you page assures users that their action was successful and appreciated.
• Upselling Opportunity: It’s a prime spot to introduce users to other products, services, or content they might find valuable.

How to Create a Thank You Page (2 Ways)

There are 2 different ways you can create a successful thank you page:

• Build a thank you landing page with SeedProd
• Create a thank you popup with OptinMonster

With SeedProd, the best landing page builder for WordPress, you can create a separate thank you landing page on your site.

With SeedProd’s drag and drop landing page builder, you can easily create a custom thank you page. Plus, SeedProd offers professionally-designed thank you page templates so you can get started quickly.

You can also customize your thank you page to generate leads and boost conversions with pre-built blocks like contact forms, giveaways, countdown timers, social profiles, and much more.

If you want to send users to a separate page to view your thank you message, SeedProd is the best option for that.

On the other hand, if you don’t want to create a separate landing page, you can create a thank you popup with OptinMonster.

With OptinMonster’s success themes, you can eliminate the need for a separate thank you page because the success message and CTA appear right inside the optin box.

OptinMonster comes with several campaign targeting and trigger options to create a high-converting thank you popup on your site. Click the button below to start your 100% risk-free OptinMonster account today:

Are you ready to create the perfect thank you page? Let’s take a look at how to write a thank you page and what to put on your thank you page.

What to Put on Your Thank You Page (3 Essential Elements)

While some thank you pages are seen by new subscribers, and others are seen by new (or returning) customers, every thank you page must have these 3 essential elements.

If any one of these key ingredients is missing, then your thank you page will fall short of victory…

1. A confirmation message
2. A clear call to action
3. Specific instructions on what to do next

Let’s dive into each of these elements in more detail.

1. Confirmation Message

For a good user experience, and to serve its primary function, your thank you page must include a confirmation that the user’s action was successful.

You need to actually spell it out for them, otherwise, you’ll risk leaving them confused or disoriented.

A simple, “Thank you for subscribing!” or “Your order is complete!” will do just fine. Just make sure that it is clear what just happened (and what they should expect to happen next, if necessary).

Unfortunately, this is where most thank you pages stop. If you want to stop leaving money on the table, you’ll need to get your users to take another action right away. (Read on to learn how…)

2. Call to Action

Now that you’ve confirmed their successful action (and you’ve explained what will happen next), it’s time to take your thank you page to the next level by adding in a call to action (CTA).

A very clear CTA will move your users to take the next step in your sales process.

This is the part where most thank you pages fall short, but adding this one thing to your thank you page will make the world of difference in terms of your conversions and sales.

Your CTA could be as simple as asking your new subscribers to download their lead magnet.

Or, it could be more complex, like offering a coupon code and encouraging users to start shopping, like in the thank you page example created with SeedProd below.

So what other CTAs can you include? Well, here are some great thank you page call to action examples…

• Ask them to whitelist your email address
• Ask them to share on social media
• Ask them to register for a webinar or event
• Ask them to purchase a low-dollar offer
• Ask them to purchase a related product
• Ask them to create an account
• Ask them to fill out a survey

We will go into each of these examples and more later on in this article, but all you need to know for now is that your thank you page needs to include a call to action.

3. Specific Instructions

The third thing to put on your thank you page is specific instructions on exactly what to do next.

You already have a call to action that gives users the next step. But in order to get users to actually take you up on it, you’ll need to get super specific about what they should do and how to do it.

For example, if your call to action is to ask subscribers to whitelist you, you could include a brief video tutorial or screenshots of how to do that.

Or, if you want new subscribers to sign up for your webinar, you could tell them to “Click on the blue button below to save your spot on the live call”. (See how these instructions are way more specific than simply saying, “Register for the webinar”?)

Your instructions don’t need to be lengthy. The point here is to be precise– people need instructions more than you may think.

OK, now that you know the 3 essential elements, let’s look at some thank you page examples.

These 5 types of thank you pages are highly effective at moving new subscribers and customers further along your sales funnel…

After-Optin Thank You Page Examples

When someone successfully opts into your email list, you can use your thank you page to accomplish one of three main goals:

1. Drive more traffic to your optin
2. Begin to nurture leads
3. Acquire customers right away

These types of thank you pages work to generate more leads, nurture your newly acquired leads, and even generate some initial sales.

Here are some examples of after-optin thank you pages…

Thank You Page Example #1: The “Snowball Effect”

Did you know that your thank you page can actually drive more optins?

When you use your thank you page to drive traffic to your optin form, you’ll increase your optins, which increases your traffic, which increases your optins even more, and so on, creating a powerful snowball effect.

The way to create a snowball effect is to invite new subscribers to share your optin page with their friends. You can include social media sharing buttons to make this easy for your users.

You can even include an extra incentive for them to share.

SeedProd seamlessly integrates with the best giveaway plugin for WordPress, RafflePress, so you can easily add a giveaway to your thank you page.

This is a fun and effective way to incentivize new subscribers to share your optin page.

With the verified bonus actions, you can reward users with extra giveaway entries for sharing your page.

Most users will be more than willing to share your optin page for a better chance of winning an awesome prize.

Thank You Page Example #2: The “Lead Nurturer”

You can also use your thank you page to begin the lead nurturing process right away.

After all, why wait? The more you can increase your touch points with a lead, the more likely they will become a customer.

One way to nurture leads on your thank you page is by recommending posts on your blog that are related to the lead magnet they just received. This will keep them reading and browsing your site for longer.

Here’s a thank you page example where Salesforce included extra resources to explore.

You can also nurture your leads by asking them to register for a webinar or an event. They’ve downloaded your lead magnet, so now is a great time to get them to commit to a live event.

Here’s an example of a webinar registration thank you page from Wisita.

A third way to start nurturing leads right off the bat is by asking them to participate in your community. By bringing new leads into your community and social platforms, you’ll be able to have more of a dialog with them.

In this example, the thank you message includes a call to action to “like us on Facebook”.

Thank You Page Example #3: The Tripwire

After someone opts in with their email address, you can monetize your thank you page and use it to immediately turn that new lead into a customer. Here’s how to monetize your thank you page…

First, you’ll need to have a low-dollar offer, or a “tripwire”. A tripwire is an offer that is a complete no-brainer, somewhere in the ballpark of $1-$20.

Even though it’s priced so low, the tripwire offer still requires someone to pull out their wallet and become a paying customer. This is important because the first sale is the hardest. But when someone has bought from you once, it’s much easier to get them to buy from you again.

Digital Marketer is a great thank you page tripwire example. Their success message says that your lead magnet is on the way, and while you’re waiting for it to arrive, you should check out this other offer.

Once you click on the “I’ll take a look” button, you’ll be taken directly to the sales page with a $7 tripwire offer.

Now that we’ve seen some thank you page examples that are shown after an email optin, let’s look at some examples of thank you pages that are shown after the user completes a purchase.

After-Sale Thank You Page Examples

When someone completes a purchase, the goals for your thank you page are going to be a bit different. Your two main goals are probably going to be to…

1. Maximize customer value
2. Increase customer retention

Here are some examples of after-sale thank you pages…

Thank You Page Example #4: The “Value Maximizer”

If your goal for your thank you page is to increase the value of your customer, you can offer a cross-sell or an up-sell.

Here’s an example of how Amazon does it. After you check out with this acoustic guitar, you’ll see some additional options to add a 4-year warranty or add some guitar lessons.

For more ideas to increase customer value, check out our post on increasing your sales funnel conversion rate.

Thank You Page Example #5: The “Customer Keeper”

If your goal for your thank you page is to increase customer retention, then you could do a number of things. For instance, you could ask them to create an account with you.

The thank you page is the ideal time to ask someone to create an account because you don’t want it to be a speed bump in the purchase process. You should never require someone to create an account with you before the purchase has been completed!

Crate and Barrel asks you to create an account on their thank you page by suggesting that you “save your information for next time.” This is a great way to word it because it presents the ask as a benefit to the user.

(Also note the blue “Take our 1 Minute Survey” button. Including a survey on your thank you page is a great way to gather market research and further improve your sales process!)

A second way to increase customer retention is by reinforcing the decision to buy. By emphasizing the idea that the customer just made a good purchase, your thank you page helps to eliminate buyer’s remorse, and increase the chances of a customer returning to make another purchase.

You could do this by including customer testimonials or even case studies on your thank you page. Any kind of social proof will help new customers to feel good about their decision to buy.

For more ideas on using social proof on your thank you page, check out our post on 11 ways to use social proof to increase your conversions.

How OptinMonster Can Enhance Your Thank You Page:

• Design Templates: Choose from a variety of professionally designed templates tailored for thank you pages.
• A/B Testing: Experiment with different designs and messages to see what resonates most with your audience.
• Seamless Integration: Connect with popular email marketing platforms to personalize the user experience further.
• In-depth Analytics: Understand user behavior on your thank you page to continually refine and improve.

With its intuitive design templates, robust A/B testing capabilities, and in-depth analytics, OptinMonster empowers you to create thank you pages that not only express gratitude but also drive action.

Whether you’re looking to upsell, gather feedback, or deepen the connection with your audience, OptinMonster is the partner you need. Elevate your post-conversion strategy with OptinMonster and watch your digital relationships flourish.

Get started with OptinMonster today.

The average website conversion rate is between 2-5%. Increasing conversions even by a little bit can add up to a large impact on your revenue and profits.

In this article, we’ll go over 17 simple ways to boost conversions on your website and throughout your sales funnel.

1. Track Website Usage
2. Create a Conversion Funnel
3. Strengthen Your CTA
4. A/B Test Everything
5. Have a Clear Value Proposition
6. Recover Abandoned Carts
7. Add a Countdown Timer
8. Create Urgency
9. Upsell or Cross-sell
10. Use Exit-Intent Pop-ups On Your Site
11. Add Testimonials, Reviews, and Other Social Proof
12. Offer a Money-back Guarantee
13. Answer Questions Through Live Chat
14. Make the First Step Simple
15. Simplify Your Forms
16. Optimize for Mobile Users
17. Remove Distractions

But first, let’s quickly review what conversion rate is.

What is Conversion Rate?

Conversion rate is the number of people who take a desired action, or conversion, divided by the number of people who COULD take that action.

For example, the conversion rate of an email signup form would be the number of website visitors who sign up on the form divided by the total number of visitors.

The conversion rate of a sales page would be how many people who see that sales page actually make a purchase.

A contact form’s conversion rate would be the percentage of site visitors who fill out the contact form.

For more detail, here’s how to calculate website conversion rate.

How to Increase Conversion Rates

What is a good conversion rate? The answer really depends on what is typical for your site. On average, most websites have a conversion rate between 2-5%. But there’s always room for improvement.

Mathematically speaking, there are 2 ways to increase your average conversion rate. You can increase the number of people converting, or decrease the total amount of traffic.

If your website’s conversion rate is currently 2%, that means 2 out of every 100 visitors are making a purchase, signing up for your email list, or some other conversion. To increase your conversion rate to 5%, you could either try to get 3 more people to convert, for a total of 5 out of 100. Or you keep the same 2 people signing up but only have 40 visitors to your site.

We don’t really want to decrease your traffic, so let’s focus on getting more visitors to convert.

17 Conversion Boosting Techniques Any Website Can Use

No matter what kind of website you have, you can apply or adapt most of these conversion tips for your business model. The reasons that people aren’t converting remain the same across industries:

• No need: This doesn’t mean customers don’t need your product or service, they just don’t realize that they do.
• No money: Again, it’s not that the customer doesn’t have money to spend, they just have other things they’d rather buy.
• No hurry or attention: Most people procrastinate decision-making and default to choosing nothing. There’s also so many distractions online that can cause lost sales.
• No trust: Shoppers feel more fear of loss than desire for gain. They’re reluctant to take on financial or emotional risk on something unknown.
• Too hard: Even the most determined customer who has the need, money, urgency, and trust needed to convert might give up if the process is too difficult!

Let’s look at some specific conversion rate optimization tips that address each of these reasons.

1. Track Website Usage

Before you do anything else, you need to understand if and how people are responding to the offers and content already on your website. In other words, you need to know if your customers feel a need for your product or service at all.

Google Analytics lets you track traffic and conversions from your website. It’s a great way to get a baseline for what’s working and what could be improved.

Google Search Console shows you important search engine optimization (SEO) insights, such as the keywords that bring the most traffic to your website. This gives you an idea of what your potential customers are searching for so you can make sure your messaging is aligned with their needs.

Heatmaps are another conversion rate optimization (CRO) tool that you can use to understand user behavior. A heatmap is a visualization of where visitors are scrolling and clicking on your website so you know where to place headlines, CTA buttons, and other elements.

You can also conduct your own user surveys to ask your website visitors exactly what they’re looking for. Check out our popup survey examples for inspiration if you need ideas.

Put together, all this data will let you know the best opportunities for improving conversion rates on your site.

2. Create a Conversion Funnel

Not every website visitor will need your product right this moment. But that doesn’t mean they won’t need it later!

For visitors who aren’t ready to buy yet, bring them into a conversion marketing funnel and nurture them over time. We’ve put together a whole list of ways to increase conversions throughout your sales funnel.

For capturing email addresses at the top of the sales funnel, there’s no better tool than OptinMonster.

OptinMonster is the #1 lead generation tool you can use to bring more traffic into your sales and marketing funnel.

With OptinMonster, you can add eye-catching popups for email signup, abandoned cart prevention, upselling, product recommendations, referral forms, and so much more.

With its drag and drop builder and vast template library, you’ll be able to build a campaign in minutes.

The powerful display rules engine lets you add campaigns to your online store, webpage, email marketing signup page, or anywhere else you’d like to get higher conversion rates.

In fact, Shockbyte doubled its conversion rate with OptinMonster. Check out their case study to see how they did it!

3. Strengthen Your CTA

CTA stands for “call to action.” You don’t want people to just read your website. You want them to do something:

• Join your email list
• Purchase a product
• Fill out a contact form
• Follow you on social media

Your CTA is what invites the reader to take action. You want your CTA to be interesting and compelling, so try to focus on the benefits the reader will receive rather than just the action that you want them to take.

For example, instead of merely saying, “Sign up for my email list,” you could say, “Get my 40% off code!” The first CTA is boring and vague. Why should they sign up? What will they get in return? The second one is much more exciting and tells you exactly what to expect.

For more detail, we’ve got a complete guide on how to write the perfect call to action.

4. A/B Test Everything

Your conversion goals should be constantly evolving. There’s always room for improvement! To find the best messaging, try A/B testing.

A/B testing, or split testing, means using different versions of the same element and seeing what performs better. You can split test anything and everything: headlines, CTAs, landing page layouts, popup campaign designs, and more.

With OptinMonster, you can add split testing to any campaign with a single click. Then you can test out different copy, design, and graphics so that you know exactly what works.

5. Have a Clear Value Proposition

When it comes to “no money” reasons for not buying, the issue usually isn’t that the customer actually can’t afford the purchase. They just don’t see the value of your offer yet. This is where a clear and convincing value proposition comes in.

A value proposition is a message that shows people the unique benefits of your product or service. It answers the question, “What will this do for me, the buyer?”

For instance, WPForms promises a drag and drop WordPress form builder. You know exactly what you’re getting and why you need it.

To write a strong value proposition, make sure your copy is written for your specific target audience in mind. Don’t try to convince the entire world to buy your product. Focus on who the product is really for.

Make sure you explain how the features meet the specific pain points of your buyers. When describing the benefits, use words and images to paint a picture of their life after they say yes. You can also inform them of the costs of saying no. Just try not to overdo the scare tactics, as that comes off as untrustworthy.

6. Recover Abandoned Carts

Cart abandonment is a huge issue for all eCommerce businesses, regardless of industry. If you’re selling online, recovering abandoned carts can seriously boost your eCommerce conversion rate.

OptinMonster makes it easy to create abandoned cart campaigns such as a floating bar offering free shipping:

Or you can use an interactive discount spin wheel to entice customers to finish their purchase:

If the customer still leaves their cart behind, you may still be able to save the sale by sending targeted abandoned cart emails.

Most abandoning visitors never come back, so you have nothing to lose by trying to convert those abandoned carts!

7. Add a Countdown Timer

Online shoppers often say, “I’ll finish this later,” but never do. To counteract this tendency, you need to give them an incentive to act now.

Countdown timers are the perfect way to drive more conversions in real-time. You can offer discounts, free shipping, or even product availability for a limited time.

8. Create Urgency

There are other ways to motivate customers to act now instead of later.

For example, you can offer lower prices or first access during a presale period. Another strategy is to display low stock notifications on your product pages or in popups.

Here are some more ideas for using urgency to improve conversion rates on eCommerce sites and other business sites.

9. Upsell or Cross-sell

Upselling is when you offer customers an upgraded version of what they’re thinking of buying. Cross-selling is recommending another product related to the item they were originally planning to buy, sometimes at a significant discount.

Upselling can have positive, negative, or no effect on your conversion rate. The only way to tell is by testing.

Sometimes adding an upsell or cross-sell deal right before checkout can tip the buyer into taking action. This is especially true if it’s a time limited discount that won’t be available after they check out.

Other times, in-cart upsells can feel pushy and turn customers off. In that case, you may be better off waiting until after the sale and offering 1-click post-purchase upsell.

10. Use Exit-Intent Pop-ups On Your Site

So many visitors abandon a site and never come back. Exit-intent popups can boost conversions by keeping these visitors on your site long enough to take an action.

You can use exit popups to distribute lead magnets that grow your email list or coupons to improve conversions in your eCommerce store.

Make sure to keep user experience in mind when adding popups. The popup should connect to the user’s original intent for that page. For instance, if someone comes to your site looking for a dessert recipe, the best exit popup would also be related to desserts or perhaps entertaining. Check out these other exit popup hacks to help you make the most of this strategy.

You can also see how MedStar media increased conversions 500% with exit intent popups.

11. Add Testimonials, Reviews, and Other Social Proof

Lack of trust is a big issue with online business. To build trust, you need to provide external evidence, not just your own word about how good your product is. Of course you’re going to say the product is great, because you want to persuade people to buy it!

Authentic testimonials and customer reviews on your product pages can improve conversion rates by offering social proof. When a first-time visitor sees that hundreds of other customers have had a good experience with your brand, they’ll be more likely to believe they will also have a good experience. Here’s our complete guide to customer testimonial examples to help you get started.

Another simple way to build trust is to make sure your website and payment processors are secure and then display these security and privacy badges on your checkout page. Shoppers want to know that their payment and personal information are safe.

12. Offer a Money-back Guarantee

Customers are afraid of losing money on a solution that doesn’t work. That fear is usually greater than their desire for the solution itself.

A money-back guarantee can reduce that fear significantly. By offering to give their money back if they aren’t satisfied, you show that you really believe in your service or product. After all, who would offer such a guarantee on a terrible product? By taking on the risk, you also show that you care about delivering a good customer experience.

We practice what we preach around here! OptinMonster has a 14-day money back guarantee that if your leads, subscribers, or sales don’t go up in 14 days, you’ll get your money back!

13. Answer Questions Through Live Chat

Another way to build trust is through providing excellent customer service. Live chat is a great channel for answering pre-sale questions that customers might have and gently removing any objections they might have. Whether you use an automated chatbot or real-time chat tool, live chat can help you serve more customers quickly and efficiently.

14. Make the First Step Simple

The first step in a conversion is always the hardest to persuade people to take. Keep it simple by using a Yes/No form.

Also called a 2-step optin, Yes/No forms don’t ask for an email address or purchase right away. Instead, you ask a simple question that most people will say Yes to. Once the user clicks on Yes, the next action appears.

Clicking on the first Yes is a micro-conversion, which prepares the user for the next conversion. This is an example of the Zeigarnik effect in action, which is the human tendency to continue following a set of steps in order once the first step has been completed.

OptinMonster can add a 2-step optin to any campaign you want. You can also use MonsterLinks to turn any link or button on your site into a 2-step optin.

15. Simplify Your Forms

Long or complicated checkout processes are a key reason for cart abandonment. Likewise, overly complicated signup or contact forms can easily lead to form abandonment.

Simplifying your forms addresses both “no trust” and “too hard” barriers to conversion to improve your bottom line.

Keep things simple to build trust and reduce friction. For example, many customers don’t want to give out their phone number. If you don’t need it and aren’t going to use it, remove that field from your checkout and signup forms.

Similarly, many eCommerce checkouts have a Company Name field by default. Take this out if that information isn’t relevant to your business.

Guest checkout can greatly reduce your abandonment rate, especially from new customers who don’t want the hassle of creating an account just to buy one thing.

If you’re offering a free trial, don’t require a credit card if possible. Consumers are afraid of getting trapped in a contract when they aren’t sure they’re ready to commit yet.

Whatever information you do collect, be clear about how you’re going to use it and how you’ll keep the information secure.

16. Optimize for Mobile Users

More users than ever are browsing and shopping from mobile devices. Make sure your forms and pages look good and work properly on mobile just as they do on desktop. You’ll also want to pay attention to page speed since mobile users may be relying on data networks to load your site. A fancy web design won’t do you any good if the majority of your audience can’t see it!

You can also consider using mobile-specific marketing campaigns. You could send SMS marketing instead of email, or incorporate geolocation in your messaging since mobile users are more likely to be browsing away from home. OptinMonster makes it easy to create high-converting mobile exit-intent popups.

17. Remove Distractions

Finally, keep every page as simple as possible. Ask yourself what the goal of each page is, and if every element is serving that goal.

Unlike some marketing experts, we believe there are no absolute rules when it comes to how many CTAs to include on a page or when to add popups. Instead, we recommend basing your decisions on data such as heatmaps and click rates.

That’s why OptinMonster comes with detailed conversion rate metrics to help you make informed decisions about your marketing.

We hope this list has given you some ideas for meeting your conversion goals.

Here are some other resources for getting a good conversion rate on your website:

• Conversion Rate Optimization Tools That Pros Can’t Ignore
• How to Increase Your Mobile Conversion Rate
• Web Design Principles that Will Boost Your Conversion Rate

Conversion optimization is an ongoing process, so we encourage you to pick a few strategies from this article to try, observe the results, and tweak accordingly. Let us know how it goes and if you have any questions!

A/B testing is an invaluable part of any marketing strategy. It allows you to rely on data to make smart choices about how you communicate with your audience.

But for most marketers, A/B testing can be something we put on the backburner. And more often than not, it’s simply because we’re not sure where to start.

That’s why, in today’s article, we’re going to look at 60 A/B testing examples that you can start using today.

But before we do, let’s clarify why you should be A/B testing your optin campaigns in the first place.

Why You Need to A/B Test Your Campaigns

If you’re using a lead generation software like OptinMonster, it can be tempting to create a few generic popup campaigns and hope for the best.

With A/B testing, instead of simply hoping for the best, you can make informed decisions based on what resonates best with your audience.

One example is from a marketing company called Logic Inbound. They used OptinMonster’s split testing to increase their client’s conversions by over 1500%.

Want to learn more about how OptinMonster increases conversions? Check out this post: How Does OptinMonster Work (8 Benefits + 12 Case Studies).

The bottom line is that A/B testing is something every marketer knows should be done. And, today, we’re going to give you 60 split testing ideas so you can get started.

60 A/B Testing Ideas to Increase Conversions

In today’s tutorial, we’ll be splitting up our A/B testing ideas into categories:

• Your Offer
• Campaign Design
• Buttons
• Copy
• Social Proof
• Functionality
• Targeting and Trigger Rules

Feel free to jump to the category you’re most interested in. Otherwise, let’s dive in!

Your Offer

1. Promotion vs. Informational Lead Magnet: One of the most powerful ways to entice customers to opt into your campaign is with a promotion or lead magnet. Test whether your audience would prefer to have a discount on your product or whether they’d like an exclusive piece of content.

2. Change Your Lead Magnet: If you offer a lead magnet to your audience for your optin campaign, try changing the type of lead magnet you use. You could test whether your audience likes checklists, infographics, eBooks, or other types of information-based lead magnets.

Need more ideas for your lead magnets? Check out these 69 lead magnet ideas you can start using today.

3. Size of the Discount: If you offer your audience a discount, try changing the amount you offer. You may assume that the more you give, the more conversions you’ll have.

But if you find that a 10% discount brings in the same amount of leads as a 20% discount, you can cut your losses by continuing with the 10% promotion.

4. Adding a Countdown Timer for Urgency: If you’re running a limited time offer, you probably mention that in your campaign. To add an even greater sense of urgency, see if adding a countdown timer to your campaign can boost conversions.

Cracku, a company that helps students prepare for exams, increased conversions by 300% with a simple countdown timer.

5. Using Scarcity: If you’re running a promotion on limited items that may go out of stock, try testing that in your campaign’s copy. In one version, you can let users know “products are running out,” and, in the other version, you could give specific numbers as to how many of these items are left.

Campaign Design

6. Template Design: At OptinMonster, we have over 50 pre-built templates that you can choose from. You should take advantage of this by replicating campaigns with different designs and styles. That way, you can figure out what type of design your target audience is drawn to.

7. Desktop vs. Mobile: Whenever you create a campaign with OptinMonster, you can filter the template designs by device. You can choose templates that work for Desktop/Tablet or others that are Mobile Optimized:

Test out which templates perform better with your audience.

Want to keep better track of how your audience visits your site? Try out MonsterInsights, the best Google Analytics plugin for WordPress.

8. Layout (Columns): When you’re building a template from scratch, you can choose how many columns you want in your optin campaign. Test whether your campaign gets more conversions with a single, double, triple, or quadruple column layout.

You’d be surprised how a minor design component like columns can impact your conversion rates.

9. Headline Color: Your headline is the first thing people will likely see on your optin campaigns. Check whether specific colors are better at attracting your audience’s attention in the headline.

10. Headline Font: Many professional designers compare choosing your font to choosing a pair of shoes: the ones you go with say a lot about your style and personality. Use your optin campaign headline to test whether certain fonts perform better than others.

11. Background Color: Did you know that different colors have often been associated with different emotions? Change the background color of your campaigns to see if specific colors connect with your audience in a way that affects conversion rates.

12. Background Image: We often think that images are part of the campaign itself, but you can put your copy (and other images) over a background image too. In fact, famous psychologist Robert Cialdini suggests that the type of image you put in the background will actually affect how users will interact with your website.

13. Subheading Color: Just like you did with your header, try playing with the color of your subtext (the text underneath your header but before your call to action (CTA). You can try matching the color to your header or trying our a whole new color to lead up to your CTA.

14. Subheading Font: Again, like your header, try to test what font you use for the subheader. If you’re adding new information about your offer, use different fonts to highlight that section.

15. Privacy Message: Your privacy message is a small note under your call to action that lets subscribers know how you’ll use their contact information. For some audiences, this is reassuring.

For others, it raises more red flags than anything else.

Create a campaign with a privacy message, and one without to see how it changes conversion rates.

16. Font Sizes: Whenever you change your fonts for your heading, subheading, or buttons (which we’ll discuss soon), you can also play with the font sizes. Try making larger fonts to grab attention. Or, lower the font to see if it improves the style of your design.

17. Font Weights: Some people confuse font size and font weight. Your font weight will change the thickness of the letters. That can make some sections of your campaign’s copy stand out more. Try to adjust the font weights in your A/B tests to see if it has an impact on your overall results.

18. Images vs. No image: We’ve already covered using a background image, but you should experiment with adding an image to your campaign. Sometimes the right visual image alone can get people to opt into your offer.

19. Image vs. Image: Another good A/B test with images is to try different images over the same campaign. Professional designers find years to find ways to visually entice their audience. To think that marketers can get the perfect image the first time around might be overly ambitious.

With A/B testing, you can try out different images until you find the one that resonates with your target audience.

20. Image vs. Video: It’s no secret that videos are gaining more popularity for marketers. On blog posts, in social media posts, or in paid ads, videos definitely get results.

Try swapping our your static image for a dynamic video to see if it brings you more conversions.

Buttons

21. Button Color: Your button is really your call to action. It’s where you want people to click to take the action you want them to. Use different colors to see if people respond better to a bold CTA or a more traditional one.

22. Button Placement: There are general rules for how your optin campaigns should be. Usually, it goes:

• Header
• Subtext
• Optin form
• CTA

But these aren’t universal laws. You can play with where your button is placed on your campaign to see if your audience responds better with a different layout.

23. Button Font: Try using a different font for your CTA button than the rest of your campaign. It might be helpful to give your button a unique style to make it stand out more.

24. Button Icon: At OptinMonster, you have the option of adding little icons to your CTA. This small visual detail might resonate more with your target audience. Try different tests with, without, and changing up your CTA button’s icon.

25. Button Action: In many cases, your optin campaign will go from the optin view (which asks for your user’s email address) to the success view (which gives a small thank you message).

But, again, this isn’t set in stone. You can play with your button actions, especially if you’re trying to increase page views on your site. You can redirect users to various landing pages and test which ones lead to more overall sales.

26. Button vs. Yes/No Buttons: Try using a different number of buttons on your campaigns. A good example of this is with changing a simple “yes” button option with a “yes or no” option.

The Yes/No campaigns are incredibly effective because of the Zeigarnik effect. This is a psychological phenomenon that shows people tend to finish a process once they’ve started. Smart marketers know that if you can get users to click “yes,” they will be more likely to finish opting into your offer.

Try changing the layout of your campaign from a single button to a “yes or no” offer or vice-versa.

27. Button vs. Yes/Yes Buttons: Another test you can do is trying out a Yes/Yes campaign. In a traditional “Yes/No” campaign, the “no” option typically closes the campaign.

A Yes/Yes campaign will take users to the same URL no matter what option they choose, but for different reasons. Here’s an example:

If a user clicks the first option, it’s to redeem the free domain. If the user clicks the second option, it’s to get hosting services, but they may not need the domain.

Either way, all roads lead to higher conversions for you.

Copy

28. Headline Copy: We’ve already mentioned how important your headline is. You should take the time to A/B test various headline copy to see what resonates with your buyer persona.

Remember, the copy you write isn’t successful just because you like it or don’t like it. It’s successful when it works. And the only way to know that is with A/B testing.

29. Subheader Copy: Similar to your header copy, you should play around with how you phrase your subheader text.

In some cases, you may also test removing the subheader completely. When it comes to writing compelling copy, less is often more.

30. Button Copy: In the past, we’ve written extensively on writing strong calls to action. Test out different language in your CTA button for the highest conversions possible.

Need some ideas for good action verbs? Check out this list of over 700 power words you can use for more compelling CTA copy.

31. Specific Numbers: In your campaign copy, try using specific vs. non-specific numbers. So instead of saying, “We’ve served over 2,000 clients,” you could say something like, “2174 clients can’t be wrong!”

Specifying the exact number of people can grab your audience’s attention and build credibility. But you won’t know what works best for you without split testing first.

32. First vs. Second person: We all learned in school to avoid the first person (I, me, we, & us). But writing copy online is different. Try switching the voice of your text from first to second person (you, your, yours).

A good rule of thumb in writing copy is to focus on the reader and what they’ll get. But you can test the perspective of your copy from first to second person to be sure it gets you as many conversions as possible.

Social Proof:

33. Using a Testimonial: Adding a testimonial to your optin campaign can build trust and get higher conversions.

If you find that a testimonial is getting higher conversion rates, don’t stop there. You can change the testimonial or add a photo, name, and title of who whoever gave the testimonial. All of these elements can play a role in optimizing your conversion rates.

34. Adding a Review: Similar to a testimonial, you can add a review that your product or service received. This is most often done with a visual star rating to show how many stars you received out of 5.

35. Display Past Clients: Test out whether it helps your audience to know about popular clients you’ve had in the past. You can display easily recognizable company logos.

If you find that displaying past clients has a positive effect on conversions, you can start testing which clients get you the most optins.

36. “As Seen On” References: Have you been published on credible sites across the web? Why not share some of the big names that have featured your product or service?

By using trustworthy 3rd-party sites that have featured your work, you can build more trust for your own brand. This often leads to higher conversions.

Test out showing these different publications on your optin campaigns.

37. Statistics: Try adding a few statistics to your optin copy. Show how much impact your product or service has added to a specific niche.

And like we talked about earlier, you can test out whether you should give general stats or provide detailed and specific numbers in your copy.

Functionality

38. Campaign Types: Many marketers think of lightbox popups when it comes to optin campaigns. But there are so many others.

At OptinMonster, we want our users to have the freedom to take a multi-campaign approach to increase their conversion goals. One A/B test you can try is which one of these campaign works best. You could, for example, compare using a lightbox popup against a floating bar campaign.

We have 9 different campaign types that you can start using and testing today.

39. Sidebar Forms: Sidebar forms are controversial. Some marketers think they aren’t effective enough to use. Others believe it catches enough low hanging fruit to justify the 10-minute setup.

You can A/B test your sidebar widgets on your site to see how many new leads they bring you each month. Why is this important? Because if you run a page with ads on it, that space on your site has a certain monetary value.

If your sidebar widget is taking up the spot of a paid ad but not generating any revenue by capturing leads, then it may not be the best campaign to use.

40. Upsell: Once you’ve sold a product, test an upsell campaign to see if you can boost overall customer sales. Upsells show a different product at a higher price point than the one a customer previously purchased.

If you’re tracking your customers’ journey, you can test upsells to see if they have an impact on sales.

41. Downsell: Another approach would be to A/B test downsell campaigns, too. Your target audience may not respond well to campaigns that offer more expensive offers. But, they may appreciate a good value!

For that, you can test follow up campaigns to see if you can boost total sales with a good downsell campaign.

42. Cross-Sell: Another type of campaign to test out would be cross-selling. Rather than thinking about the price-point of your offer, you can show customers related items to ones they’ve shown an interest in.

You can create cross-selling campaigns and see if they lead to noticeable increases in your revenue.

43. Multiple Campaigns: Every page should have one goal. But that doesn’t mean every page should have just one campaign.

You can combine different campaigns to boost your page’s overall conversions. Test out the number and types to campaigns that you attach to each page.

Over time, you’ll find the balance between showing too many optin forms on one page and not showing enough to get maximal conversions. But you can only reach this point through detailed A/B testing.

44. Personalize by Name or Location: One cool feature that OptinMonster offers is the ability to show follow up campaigns with your user’s name or location. This is an excellent way of grabbing your customer’s attention.

Try personalizing your campaign by adding the visitor’s name or location on the campaign itself. Then, wait to see if this personalization leads to higher conversion rates.

45. Phone Number or No Phone Number: Depending on what niche you’re in, you may or may not need your customer’s phone number.

But, you may find that when you ask for a phone number, your conversion rates drop.

A/B test to see what happens when you prompt users to add their phone number to opt into your offer.

Need phone numbers for SMS marketing? Check out this post on how to create an SMS popup with OptinMonster.

46. 2-Step vs. 1-Step Optin: Earlier, we discussed the standard flow of an optin form. The user typically sees an optin form, fills out and submits their information, then goes to the success page (with a nice thank you message).

But you can add a step with a “yes or no” question before the optin form appears. This can be a great way of making sure your visitors don’t feel pressured to immediately hand over their contact information.

You can also use a clickable MonsterLink to engage your site’s visitors. Users click this link (as the first step) and see your optin form (your second step). So, for example, you can test whether a clickable MonsterLink campaign brings you more conversions than an exit-intent popup that goes straight to an optin form.

Either way, you should test whether a 2-step optin or a traditional campaign works best for your goals.

47. Yes/No vs. Yes/Yes: Another test you can run is comparing a Yes/No campaign vs. a Yes/Yes campaign.

A Yes/No campaign has 2 options with 2 different results:

• Yes, which leads to the optin form
• No, which closes the campaign

A Yes/Yes campaign has 2 options, both with the same result:

• Yes, which leads to a webpage
• No, which leads to the same webpage as “yes” but for a different reason

For a small explanation on why and how to make this work, go back to tip #27.

You should test out whether a Yes/No or a Yes/Yes campaign gets you more conversions.

48. Removing Placeholders from Fields: If you’re using an optin form to get information like name, email address, and phone number, then you may use placeholders in the fields. This is the small text in the field box that lets users know what information they should enter.

Test out whether there are any changes when you remove placeholders from your form.

You can also test whether there’s any effect on changing the text of your placeholders.

49. Modify Your Error Message: When a user puts the wrong information into a field box, they’ll receive an error message. You can test out whether the error message you use is leading to more or less people opting into your offer.

If your error message isn’t crystal clear, your visitors may get frustrated and leave. You can know if your error message is effective by a simple split test.

50. Turn Double-Optin on or off: A double-optin is when users need to confirm that they want to subscribe to your contact list from their email inbox. This can be important for making sure that you get engaged people on your list rather than spam.

On the other hand, it may discourage users from signing up for your list because there’s an added step. If you test how double-optins effect your mailing list, don’t just look at the total number of sign ups. You’ll also want to check the quality (and authenticity) of these new leads.

Then you can determine which method is getting you better results.

51. “X” Button or No “X” Button: In most optin campaigns, there’s a small “X” button in the top right corner of the screen. That lets users close the campaign if they don’t want to opt into the offer.

Test the placement of the close button and whether or not you need one at all. Removing the “X” still allows users to close the campaign (by clicking off of it). But, it may encourage users to read your campaign if the “X” isn’t immediately visible.

Targeting and Trigger Rules

52. Location of Your Campaign: Where you display your campaign on your website will likely affect your conversion rates. Test out whether there’s a difference if you show the same campaign on a specific page, various URL paths, or on every page of your site.

53. Personalization (from a 3rd-Party Site): We already discussed personalizing your campaign by name and location, but you may want to try referencing 3rd-party sites.

If your visitors are coming from Facebook, for example, you can personalize the campaign with this information. It may or may not play a role in grabbing your audience’s attention long enough to convince them to optin.

The only way to know for sure? A quick A/B test.

54. Exit Intent Sensitivity (Low, Medium, High): Exit-Intent® Technology is one of our most effective triggers.

The fitness company Crossrope increased their conversion rates by 900% with a simple exit-intent popup.

That said, you may want to test the effectiveness of how sensitive your trigger is. The higher the sensitivity, the quicker your exit-intent popup will display if users are trying to leave.

An A/B test for exit-intent sensitivity can tell you if your popup is showing too soon (or not soon enough!).

55. Exit Intent Device (Mobile, Desktop, Both): 

Now, you can add exit-intent campaigns for your mobile users, too. As a result, you might want to check whether your exit-intent campaigns are as effective on mobile devices as they are on desktop.

If you notice a clear difference in conversions between the two, then you may need a different campaign type for different devices.

We recommend checking out this article on how to create a mobile exit-intent popup that converts.

56. Scroll Length Depth: One of our triggers will make your campaign appear depending on how far down the screen your user scrolls. But, you can modify the depth of the trigger to determine the most effective time for displaying your campaign.

57. Time on Page Time: Similar to our last tip, you can set your campaign to display after the user has passed a certain amount of time on your page.

A/B test the amount of time to see if it’s better to wait longer to show your campaign, or if you can get better results by showing it more quickly.

58. Inline Campaign Placement: If you use inline campaigns, you should test where they’ll be most effective. This is especially true for blog posts.

Most readers won’t read your blog posts from start to finish. Instead, they’ll either skip around or read the first 30% before moving on.

You can test where your inline campaigns are more effective by moving them closer to the top or lower toward your call to action at the end.

Where you place a campaign can sometimes be just as important as what’s on it.

59. Schedule Start and End Time: Just as important as where your campaign appears is when it appears. You can schedule start and end times for your campaigns. But, you can also A/B test this component.

See if scheduling shorter amounts of time will build more urgency and lead to more conversions. Or, if you let the campaign run longer, perhaps you’ll get even more people to optin over time.

Split testing is the only way to know for sure.

60. Animated Inactivity Sensor: Are you losing some of your readers because they aren’t engaged with your site after a certain amount of time? Using OptinMonster’s Inactivity Sensor campaign can be a great way to re-engage your site’s visitors.

A/B test these campaigns by adding dynamic animation and sound effects to see if this draws more people back to your site.

And there you have it! 60 A/B split testing examples that you can start using today. Want to learn more about A/B testing best practices?

We recommend checking out the following articles:

• 11 A/B Testing Best Practices You Can Start Using Now
• 13 A/B Testing Mistakes That Are Wasting Your Time
• How to Create a Split Test (and Why You Should)

These posts will have everything you need to make sure that you’re not leaving any conversions on the table.

Did you know that OptinMonster makes split testing ridiculously easy? You can run A/B split tests in a matter of seconds to optimize your campaigns.

Get started with OptinMonster risk-free to start boosting conversions today!

What if you want to get deeper into the conversion rate optimization issues you, specifically, deal with? You need data – and the best way to get that data is with a conversion rate audit.

What Is a Conversion Rate Audit?

A conversion rate audit is the first step of a successful conversion rate optimization process. Through a conversion rate audit, we can learn about visitor behavior, find the holes in our conversion funnels, and use our knowledge of visitor behavior to fix those holes, boosting our conversion rates.

Most of the time, people see the word “audit” and their eyes glaze over as they envision endless hours staring at pages and pages of numbers that don’t seem to have any real meaning. Your conversion rate audit will be a lot more fun than that, we can just about promise you.

In this guide, we’re going to share a scalable and repeatable conversion rate optimization audit template that you can use for your own company or for your clients if you offer CRO audit services.

Quick TipIf you conduct audits for clients, be sure to prepare a conversion rate optimization proposal to outline agreed upon duties and expectations.

When Are You Ready for Conversion Rate Optimization?

There is no “perfect time” to get started with conversion rate optimization. That being said, there are a couple of things you need to see a return on investment for a conversion rate audit: a minimum viable product and some site traffic.

Minimum Viable Product

A minimum viable product is simply a product that has enough features to be attractive to early adopters. It’s basically the first version of a product that offers enough value that people are willing to pay for it.

Site Traffic

If your website is up and running and you have traffic with the potential to become customers, you’re ready to consider optimization.

Step-by-Step Conversion Rate Audit Guide

There is no one-size-fits-all optimization strategy that can fit every industry or customer. If you want to create an effective conversion rate optimization strategy there’s no better way than putting in the time to do your own CRO audit.

We’ve pulled together this step-by-step guide to provide a conversion rate audit template that you can use again and again, without needing to recreate the process each time. Simply follow each step to analyze your content and strategies and identify areas that need attention.

Related ContentConversion Rate Optimization Statistics You Need to Know

Step 1. Set Goals and Definitions

Everything in your business needs to have a purpose, so it should come as no surprise that the first step in your audit is to set goals and definitions.

For every page and every asset on your site, you should be able to clearly state its purpose and how a visitor’s interaction with the asset supports your business objectives.

When you have a clearly defined objective for an asset you are able to create a more engaging call to action that urges visitors to complete the desired action.

If you have a WordPress site, you should definitely look into MonsterInsights for Google Analytics. You can add your goals to Google Analytics to track your conversions and MonsterInsights lets you view everything easily from within WordPress.

Step 2. Know Your Audience

Now that we know what it is we want our visitors to do, we need to figure out who these people are and what they’re actually doing on our site.

For each of the desired actions listed in Step 1, detail what your visitors are doing instead. Are they clicking away, going to a completely different page, scrolling the entire page before clicking away? Something else entirely?

Your visitors aren’t choosing the action you want for them because they don’t believe it is the best action for them to take. This is an excellent chance to do some passive analysis using heatmaps or activity tracking analytics, or collecting visitor feedback.

Tools like MouseFlow and Woopra, among others, can give you insight into user behavior that you can use to make changes to your site.

Step 3. Analyze Your Traffic

Tools like Google Analytics come in handy to let you know how visitors get to your site. Is your traffic mostly from social media posts, organic search results, paid ads? Knowing where your traffic originates helps you create content that is optimized for their needs.

Using a personalization tactic like detection referral with a popup can build trust with your site’s visitors and help you provide on-point content that is directly related to what they were reading when they clicked.

This means that the content that they’re coming to on your page could provide deeper insight or offer a solution and encourage the visitor to take action, scoring a conversion.

Learn more about referrer detection with OptinMonster.

Step 4. Evaluate Your Current Content and Assets

Don’t just publish content and let it sit around forever. Content goes stale. It needs to be refreshed, entirely rewritten, or occasionally trashed.

At a minimum, your landing pages have to have:

• Engaging headline
• Persuasive subheadline
• Great pictures
• Clear explanation of what you’re offering
• Value proposition or benefits
• Acknowledgment of pain points and how you’re going to fix them
• Testimonials
• Methods of contact
• A guarantee
• A compelling call to action

For articles or blog posts the list is similar:

• Engaging headline
• Compelling lead
• Useful subheadings
• Informative body text
• Appealing graphics and visuals
• A powerful call to action
• Relevant internal links
• Good meta description and SEO

Go through your content and site assets and make note of what needs to be refreshed, rewritten, or trashed.

Step 5. Test Your Forms

Pay attention to form length and try to match it to the purpose of the form.

For example, if you’re trying to build an email list, your form should be short and to the point; you may just want to collect a first name and email address like this:

If you’re looking for highly qualified leads, however, you may want to create a lengthier form and ask for more information up front.

The purpose of this is twofold.

First, longer forms are a deterrent to uninterested parties. If a visitor takes the time to fill out a longer form it’s more like that they really are a more highly qualified lead.

Second, longer forms provide more data about a lead and therefore provide more insight into their needs. Here’s an example of a longer forms that’s been broken into multiple pages to make it less overwhelming to the user.

WPForms, whose forms we’ve used above, is a truly great way to quickly and easily create forms for your site. And, it’s beginner friendly.

You can also split test your lead generation forms and popups using OptinMonster’s built-in split testing tool.

Step 6. Evaluate Your Checkout Process

The checkout process is where most sales are lost. Kind of ironic, right? Sad but true, 70% of shoppers will abandon carts.

A large chunk of that is simply the nature of online shopping; people browse and compare pricing, but aren’t ready to buy just yet. This is where analytics can be very helpful.

If your analytics are showing that shoppers are adding products to the cart, but never starting the checkout process, it’s likely that they were just browsing.

But, if you’re seeing a lot of shoppers begin the checkout process only to abandon the transaction, it’s likely that they’ve run into some friction that’s frustrated them enough to give up.

Session recording and replay tools like the ones mentioned in Step 2 can help you identify sticking points in your checkout process.

There are many excellent ways to reduce cart abandonment, but one of the easiest ways is to make sure that your shipping costs are listed up front. You can also create some pretty cool exit intent offers that will keep your shoppers engaged on your page like SnackNation does with this fullscreen exit offer that converts nearly 32% of abandoning visitors.

Have a look at some more ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

Step 7. Analyze Your Design and Layout

We’ve talked about knowing your audience in terms of content, but that also applies to site design and layout as well. As part of your CRO audit, you’ll want to evaluate all aspects of your site’s design and layout to see if they can be improved to increase conversions.

You’ll want to pay particular attention to how your calls to action are performing. If they aren’t converting, ask yourself why. Are they getting lost in the surrounding text and images? Try testing a call to action with greater contrast.

If you have pages or posts with high bounces rates, try to look at those through the eyes of a visitor. Is there enough whitespace or other visual interest, or is it just a wall of text? Try playing with the formatting or changing up the images you’re using to see if that helps.

As you can probably tell, when it comes to design and layout, split-testing is going to quickly become your best friend.

Check out this post for in-depth instruction on how to create a split test correctly. And, be sure to take a look at these A/B mistakes before you make them so you don’t waste your time.

Looking for ideas on design principles to test out? We’ve got you covered with these design principles that will boost your conversion rate.

Step 8. Evaluate Your User Experience

The whole of your site makes up the user experience and so far we’ve talked about each piece on its own. As part of a successful conversion rate audit, you’ll also want to consider the entire user experience.

Peter Morville’s User Experience Honeycomb helps us break down the different elements that make up the user experience and see how we’re doing.

To provide a great user experience, we want to make sure that visitors find value in the information we’re providing and the way we’re providing it. As you’re going through the user experience evaluation, you can test each piece against the elements from the UX honeycomb:

• Is the content useful? Does it solve a problem or fulfill a need?
• Is the site usable? Is it fast, responsive, and free from errors like broken links?
• Is the design desirable? Do the images and other elements support the brand’s identity?
• Is the information findable? Is the site easy to navigate with good search functionality?
• Is the content accessible to people who are differently-abled in hearing or vision?
• Are the brand, website, and content credible?

Every part of your website, from the way it flows even to your 404 error pages, adds to the user experience. Take the time to make sure that every aspect of it represents your brand the way you want your visitors to see you.

Step 9. Identify Where CRO Strategies Can Be Used

As you go through your CRO audit, you will find areas for improvement, but please don’t try to make changes as you go. Instead, note your findings thoroughly.

Before making any changes based on your findings, it’s important that you create a specific hypothesis about each problem you find, as well as proposed solutions and desired outcomes. Then, set a goal so that your CRO strategies are measurable.

We are not throwing things at a wall and seeing what sticks. We are going through a repeatable and methodical process that will actually get you results.

If you’re not familiar with creating and testing a hypothesis, don’t worry. This isn’t chemistry, and you’re not going to blow up the lab. Here are a couple of examples of what we mean by this:

Example 1

During your audit, you found that shoppers abandon their carts when they see the shipping costs.

• Hypothesis: Shipping costs are too high.
• Proposed Solution: Test using a popup to offer some shoppers free shipping
• Desired Outcome: Shoppers offered free shipping are more likely to convert
• Goal: Increase conversions by 5%

Example 2

During your audit, you found that visitors clicked away from your landing page after starting to complete a form.

• Hypothesis: The form is too long.
• Proposed Solution: Test a landing page with a shorter form and another landing page with an incentive to complete the form (lead magnet, discount).
• Desired Outcome: One strategy will be more effective than the other at converting.
• Goal: Implement the more effective strategy and increase conversions 5%

That’s it! 9 simple steps to a successful conversion rate audit. To learn more about conversion rate optimization, check out our complete beginner’s guide; it’s a great resource for non-beginners, too.

If you’re looking for inspiration from OptinMonster customers, we have an awesome selection of case studies where you’ll find tons of examples of the things our customers have done to improve their own conversion rates with OptinMonster’s help.

Not using OptinMonster yet? What are you waiting for? Join us today and see what OptinMonster can do for you!

In this beginner’s guide, we’re going to explain what conversion rate optimization is, the benefits you can get, and how to get started with your CRO strategy so you can get more leads and sales from the traffic you already have.

First, let’s get started with a definition of conversions.

What is a Conversion in Marketing?

In marketing, a conversion is an action taken by your website visitor in response to your call to action (CTA).

Conversions can take many forms. For example, when visitors subscribe to your email list, that’s a conversion. When they grab a free trial signup, that’s also a conversion. And when they buy a product after seeing your CTA, that’s definitely a conversion.

In addition to the types of conversions listed above, there are also micro-conversions, which are basically small steps along the way to taking the desired action.

For example, a micro-conversion could be clicking on a button to add a product to the cart, or to get more information about a product, even if the visitor doesn’t end up buying.

How Do You Work Out Your Conversion Rate?

To work out your conversion rate, you need to know:

• How many people see your CTA
• How many people take the desired action

You’ll need to do a little bit of math, too. Divide the number of people who act on your CTA by the total number of visitors. Then multiply by 100 to make the number into a percentage.

For example, if 400 people see your newsletter subscription CTA, and 100 actually subscribe, your conversion rate is 1 in 4 x 100, or 25%.

What is a good conversion rate? It depends. Ecommerce conversion rates vary by device, by industry and by sector.

It’s exactly the same for email marketing.

Regardless of how your conversion rate measures up to the competition, there’s always room to improve.

What Is Conversion Rate Optimization?

Conversion rate optimization is improving your site to maximize the number of conversions you get. When you know what conversion actions you want visitors to take, and what your current conversion rate is, you can work on convincing more visitors to convert.

What CRO Is Not

We’ve been talking about what conversion optimization is, but it’s also good to be clear on what it’s not. CRO is not:

• SEO (search engine optimization), which is focused on optimizing content to get more organic search traffic to your site. Instead, CRO is about working with visitors who are already on your site.
• A/B testing, which, as you’ll see later in this guide, is just one part of conversion optimization.

Here’s one more important fact about CRO: Conversion rate optimization is not the main goal of your marketing.

Your ultimate goal is getting leads, sales, and revenue – so keep in mind that CRO is just one powerful tool to help you reach that goal.

Related ContentConversion Rate Optimization Statistics You Need to Know

Benefits of CRO

There are several reasons why CRO is an essential part of your marketing strategy.

While SEO can help you to get more traffic to your site, more traffic doesn’t always mean more revenue. CRO can help you boost revenue from the traffic you already have, which is also why it’s so cost-effective.

That also means that you don’t have to have a lot of website traffic to benefit from CRO. Even low-traffic sites can improve their ROI with small tweaks to their conversion optimization strategy.

CRO can also give you more insight into your customers’ actions and preferences. A good conversion optimization strategy will help you:

• Create better, data-driven buyer personas
• Map the customer journey
• Track user flow and usability

All of this results in better user experience for your customers, which builds trust, provides a better ROI on your marketing spend and helps you win more conversions. Best of all, improvements are based on data, rather than guesswork.

3 Steps to Implement Your Conversion Optimization Strategy

So, what’s involved in a conversion optimization strategy?

There are three main steps:

1. measurement
2. analysis and hypothesis
3. changes and testing

Let’s look at these in more detail.

1. Measure Where You Are

Before you can optimize, you have to know what the status quo is. That’s why you’ll often see analytics software listed among conversion optimization tools.

For example, you’ll use analytics software to see how much traffic is coming to your site and to key pages in your conversion funnel. If you set up goals in Google Analytics, you’ll be able to track specific conversion actions.

If you’re using OptinMonster, our built-in conversion analytics tells you how your marketing campaigns are performing. And because it integrates with both Google Analytics and the major email marketing software platforms, you can track those conversions in the OptinMonster dashboard, too.

WordPress UsersFind out how to easily connect Google Analytics with WordPress here.

2. Form a Hypothesis

Next, think about what you’d need to change in order to improve your conversion rate.

That’s called forming a hypothesis: an idea about what you need to test, why, and what improvement you think you’ll see. When you get to the test, the hypothesis will help you be clear about the scope of your conversion optimization test, and whether it’s a success or a failure.

To create a conversion optimization hypothesis, use this template from Digital Marketer:

Because we observed [A] and feedback [B], we believe that changing [C] for visitors [D] will make [E] happen. We’ll know this when we see [F] and obtain [G].

For example, you could say:

Because we observed that too few people were buying our electric shavers, and visitors reported that they could not find shipping information, we believe that including a prominent header with our free shipping offer will increase purchases. We’ll know this when we sell more electric shavers over a 2 week testing period than in the previous period and get customer feedback that shows that people are aware of our free shipping offer.

3. Make Changes and Test

The final step is to make the change you think will work and test to see if you’re right. At the end of this process you will either:

• Know that your hypothesis was right, and make the change permanent
• Know that your hypothesis was wrong, and think again
• Not know either way, think of a new possible explanation, and start testing again

A Conversion Optimization Example

Here’s one example of this three-step process in action:

1. A writer found that a review she wrote had become one of the most popular pages on her site but she wasn’t getting the conversions she expected from her generic signup form.
2. She formed a hypothesis that changing the form design so it reflected the page content would result in more email signups.
3. She made the change and tested, and found that her conversion rate improved.

What Can/Should You Test?

One of the most crucial aspects of conversion optimization strategy is working out what to test. Obviously, you can test anything you like, but it’s good practice to focus on testing web pages that make a difference to meeting your goals for revenue or lead generation and to improve any areas of your website or marketing that are preventing people from converting.

Here’s a quick conversion rate optimization checklist of items to look at:

• The size and prominence of your headline, and headline wording (read our guide on headline creation tools for help with improving yours)
• The copy (we talk about the pros and cons of short and long copy in our sales page guide)
• The use of video and images on your web page
• Where the different elements appear on the page
• The color of your CTA button and where you put it on a web page, as well as the call to action wording itself

You can also compare the conversion rate for mobile and desktop visitors, and can make some tweaks to boost the mobile conversion rate.

Introduction to CRO Testing Techniques

When you’re doing conversion rate optimization, there are three main techniques you’re likely to use:

• A/B testing
• Multivariate testing
• User/usability testing

Before we get into what those are, here are a couple of terms you need to be familiar with:

• Control, which is your original web page
• Variant, or variation, which is the changed version you’re trying out

In A/B testing (which is also known as split testing) you test a control against a variant, changing one element and testing it with half your traffic to see if there’s a change in the conversion rate.

For example, one version of your CTA button could say “Buy Now” and another could say “Get the Deal”.

There’s also A/B/n testing, where you have a couple of versions of the element you’re changing, and divide the traffic equally among them. Sticking with our example above, you could have a third variant that said: “I’m In”.

In multivariate testing, you still divide the traffic, but you’ll change more than one element at a time. In our original example, you could experiment with CTA button placement as well as text. With multivariate testing, page versions can each look radically different.

Learn more about the difference between split testing vs. multivariate testing in our guide.

In addition to these two practices, there’s also usability testing. Usability testing involves asking real users to carry out tasks on your site (like browsing a product page and making a purchase) and getting feedback on their experience of carrying out those tasks.

It’s a good way to see how visitors interact with your site. It’ll also help you decide whether something’s working and what to test.

Conversion Optimization Best Practices

Here are some conversion optimization best practices to help you get more from your strategy.

First, always make sure you’re testing like against like. That means ensuring that testing groups and conditions are comparable. For example, don’t test marketing meant for 18-25s against a campaign designed for over-40s.

And you wouldn’t compare tests run during the busy holiday retail season with those carried out during the post-holiday slump.

For this reason, it’s wise to make sure you test for long enough to account for any temporary blips. As this Digital Marketer chart shows, the ideal test period will be at least a week but may be much longer depending on the traffic required and the number of variants.

Ensure that your data is reliable. That means checking that the results have statistical significance (a fancy way of saying exactly the same thing) and you’re sure you can trust them, which means an industry-standard confidence rating of at least 95%.

Learn more about this in our article on A/B testing best practices.

And finally, test the right items. As we mentioned before, you’ll focus on those that have an impact on revenue, like:

• Your most visited pages
• The important lead generation pages
• Landing pages for important pre-sales resources

Learn more about conversion rate optimization best practices in our guide to A/B testing mistakes to avoid.

5 CRO Tools You Can’t Do Without

Here are 5 tools you should integrate into your conversion optimization strategy.

1. Google Analytics

We’ve already talked out the importance of using Google Analytics to figure out what’s happening on your website, so you can identify potential areas for improvement. Learn more about Google Analytics in our step by step guide, and our tutorial on setting up a custom analytics dashboard.

If you’re using WordPress, MonsterInsights is the easiest way to properly set up Google Analytics on WordPress.

2. OptinMonster

As well as conversion tracking, OptinMonster has built-in split testing, so you can easily improve your conversions. To create a split test in OptinMonster:

Open the three-dot menu to the right of any campaign:

Click A/B Split Test:

Give your test a name and description and click Create Split Test.

OptinMonster will automatically divide your traffic and track conversions for each variant.

Here are some ideas on how to split test your marketing campaigns.

3. VWO

VWO includes a range of conversion optimization tools, including tools for multivariate testing across mobile and desktop.

4. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is a heatmap tool that lets you see where the most and least active areas of your site are. Areas that a lot of visitors read and click will look hot, while those that they ignore will look cool. That’ll help you optimize the placement of marketing campaigns, and individual parts of campaigns, such as your call to action.

5. User Testing

As mentioned earlier usability testing, also called user testing, helps you figure out how visitors interact with your site, so you can easily eliminate conversion bottlenecks. Popular usability testing tools include Qualaroo and 5 Second Test.

That’s it! Now you understand what conversion rate optimization is and how to implement it, find out how to boost conversions even more by using the fear of missing out (FOMO) in your marketing. You can also conduct a conversion rate audit to discover leaks in your funnel that you can fix to boost conversions.

You can also increase conversions more by using onsite behavioral retargeting to keep your visitors interested by showing them offers relevant to what they do on your site. And follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more guides and tutorials.