Anything thing good can always be better. So goes one of the generally accepted truisms of life.
This especially applies in ecommerce. Sure, you have a swath of loyal customers, but your sales rate could still be higher. Maybe adjusting your design or brand identity wlil help you get there, but how can you be sure?
A/B testing, also known as split testing, compares two versions of a single webpage to determine which performs better or leads to more conversions.
Below are a few places where A/B testing can be used to strengthen your brand messaging and improve your sales.
Testing Ease of Navigation
One of the first things you’ll want to do is test the navigation on your site. Do your current placements encourage or prevent consumers from searching for their favorite items, clicking your ‘About Us’ page, or examining your top products?
Putting the navigation bar into an A/B test will let you know if your buttons are effective at keeping traffic on your site, or frustrating and driving customers to your competitors.
Evaluating Your Website and its Theme
Sometimes you want to overhaul your brand identity, or your theme or, well, your entire ecommerce site. This is risky, as it could either alienate your most dedicated customers or inject your e-store with some much needed energy.
Ecommerce website theme providers, like Shopify, make it easy to swap and customize layouts. Couple this with the fact that Shopify offers a number of split-testing add-ons, and you’ve got yourself a way to experiment without a lot of time spent coding and troubleshooting.
Choose Your Words Wisely
It’s also important to test your copy. For example, if your product description reads: “made in America, 100 percent cotton, image front and back” you might want to get creative.
Try using language that demonstrates your brand identity and value: “designed & engineered in America, 100 percent premium cotton, high definition artwork on front and back, perfect for a summer barbecue by the pool or a late-night dance party.”
Testing Images
A picture is worth a thousand words, but is it telling customers the right story?
Try experimenting with your images to see what results in better conversions.
Sure, you have attractive models for your alternative clothing brand, but you are uncertain if these images are performing better than photos of mannequins would—which are much cheaper to produce.
While there are dozens of online guides on the subject, each ecommerce store is different and the only way you can be certain is with A/B testing.
Evaluating Accent Colors
Sometimes the little things make the biggest differences. Look at your front page. Does it have a ‘call to action’ such as blue “Flash Sale” or “Subscribe” button?
What if you changed the accent color to something more eye-catching like red or yellow? A/B testing would quickly determine whether these changes are beneficial.
Tracking Promotional Success
Split testing can also be useful for determining the strength of various offers and deals.
Begin by creating a single promotion and wording it in two radically different ways. Then place the promo on your homepage in two different places.
After a set period of time, compare the two variants to see if one resulted in more conversions. That way you’ll know for next time, too!
Tweaking Your Checkout Page
Last, but certainly not least, is your checkout page.
This one is tricky because you want to keep your branding, but you also want to provide a clear path to checkout so as not to distract shoppers during those last crucial moments. Why not create one branded version and one plain version to settle the matter once and for all?
Developing a theme or brand for your ecommerce business should be treated as an ongoing process to help you keep pace with society’s changing tastes.
The good news is that with A/B testing, you can continuously experiment with your ecommerce store for the best results possible.
The post How A/B Testing Can Help You Strengthen Brand Messaging appeared first on Design your way.
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