Sitecore Quick Win: A / B Test Your CTAS
A/B testing is a great way to gauge which content yields the best results for your business, so before you go ahead and replace a block of content, why not run an A/B test on it first!
A/B testing the link text on your website can be a particularly efficient way to boost visitor engagement. To ensure maximum impact start by finding a webpage with high traffic, relatively low engagement value, and a high bounce rate. You can find these pages using the Sitecore analytics tool, or through the use of Google Analytics (under the “Audience” tab, select “User Flow”). Website pages with a high bounce rate (or exit rate) are extremely costly for two reasons:
1. When the customer arrives on the webpage you’ve incurred an acquisition cost in getting them there.
2. When the customer bounces out of your site, you’ve incurred the cost of a lost opportunity.
One good way to reduce your bounce rate is through creating a stronger "Call to Action” (CTA). Growth hackers commonly achieve this through various methods such as increasing the font size or colour of the CTA. But what if your CTA already stands out?...There must be another reason visitors aren’t clicking, so perhaps it’s the wording.
Try swapping the words out for something more engaging. As an example, a link that currently reads “Offers” could be A/B tested against text that reads “Top 10 Offers”. It’s amazing to see just how much of an impact a change of words can have on click-through rates, and it’s a great example of marketing psychology in action. We know that website visitors prefer numbered lists to big blocks of text, and emotive words like “Best or Top” are also known to increase engagement.
Using specialist software to A/B test your link text is imperative. Sitecore provides tangible A/B test results which allow you to make informed decisions on which content leads to the most conversions/clicks. Sitecore 8 makes the process of setting up an A/B test very easy, and if it's not enough to do a simple 50/50 test, Sitecore also has multivariate testing functionality, so you can try an A/B/C/D/E test to see which option increases engagement most.
If you need help with A/B testing, you might be interested to know that our Sitecore support plans can be tailored to include live Sitecore tutorials. If this is of interest to you please call us now on 01189 314196.
