A/B testing has been around for quite some time, and it is really a great tool. It was a tool used to determine market trends by comparing data with other data to observe and record possible outcomes. Market research companies all over the world have done it. There are of course many ways to look at A/B testing, in fact some people have even compared it to a baseball match where you put your slugger against many pitchers and then see how he fares against each one of them.

But now it has been given an online makeover as many websites, large and small, use this form of data for their marketing. Big name websites such as Amazon.com, Google and even eBay have known to use this service, and you should too.

Online Makeover – The Use of AB Testing Online

A lot of sites have started to use this testing procedure because it allows them to make educated decisions on everything from banner advertising, page design and functionality, site branding and so on. For example if you have an eCommerce website that typically deals with online purchases – this form of testing can be very useful. You can test out functionality of a site by comparing two versions of a particular page, which is an important page in the process and chose the most effective one.

When a user selects several items into his cart but leaves the site because he cannot properly click on Proceed to Checkout because of its location or the way the page is design; in this scenario, you can create two versions of the cart page and serve up the new version to certain select users while continuing the old version with the rest of the users. One can easily look at statistics which functionality allowed users for a faster and more appropriate check out procedure. This is a classic example of AB testing.

The advantages of having this form of testing are that it is a low risk approach. In case we look at our example, if the second version does not fare well with the selected group of users, other solutions can be looked into, rather than making expensive changes. Therefore it is more cost effective and certainly gives the right data to make informed decisions.

Google offers their own A/B testing method with their Website Optimizer. This is a great starter tool because the coding involved is very basic. If you have installed Google Analytics on your website, or even a small widget, you will have ZERO problems running an A/B test.

Now, once you have a good test set up, and start tracking the data, start putting that data to action. If you do nothing with the information you get from these tests, you have failed. This is a valuable tool to increase conversions, sales, and readership.