Digital analytics and AB testing

Imagine you have two strong workhorses headed toward the same goal. Would you choose to hook up your heavy carriage to only one of them and leave the other horse in the stable? Certainly not.

 

A similar example from the digital world: You have two proven tools available to you, which, if combined, can take your digital success to a new level. Why forgo this powerful team? Analytics and A/B testing are a true dream team for your website: AT Internet provides all the major analytics data, while optimisation solution AB Tasty allows you to compare and test changes on your website. To benefit from this exceptional combo, we will show you how to use AB Tasty to transform your digital analytics data into a successful optimal version of your site in three steps.

 

Step 1: Prioritising test ideas and implementing them into test scenarios

Website optimisation can only be performed when it is actually clear what must be optimised. You should never blindly approach site optimisation, and never merely follow your gut feeling (learn more about how analytics data can impact your testing). In order to reveal your website’s weak points, reliable analytics data can serve as the first and most important guide for website optimisation. After you’ve laid a solid foundation through your preliminary analysis, the next steps are implementing your optimisation campaigns and setting up appropriate testing scenarios. To make this transition as comfortable and smooth as possible, AT Internet and AB Tasty have been fully integrated.

 

Thanks to data from your digital analytics solution, you’ve seen that different areas of your website have major potential for improvement. But where should you start your optimisation? Where should you start with A/B testing? The first step is prioritising your test ideas. Determine which of your site’s weak points should be eliminated first, or which area is most critical for your total sales. For each test idea, determine the following:

  • The desired benefits from the optimisation (such as increased click-through rate, higher turnover, entering the conversion funnel, etc.)
  • The technical requirements for the test’s implementation. Changes in CSS, JavaScript or HTML are definitely not an obstacle. However, you should also anticipate the appropriate technical resources for the implementation.
  • The timeframe: How much time would each test idea take? Which test idea do you want to implement first?

 

Example: You use both AT Internet and AB Tasty at your company. This is extremely practical, because the accurate analytics data you get allows you to optimise the performance of different parts of your website. Pay attention to specific particularities you observe. When it comes to optimisation, many companies tend to ignore homepages with few conversions but which generate high traffic. “The site finally has high traffic, which means I must be doing something right!” “Shouldn’t I be focusing on other sites?” Quite the contrary: This is exactly where we recommend rolling out your optimisation plans.

 

Step 2: Improving micro conversions

Once you have prioritised your test ideas using your analytics data and are ready to begin optimisation work, it’s a good idea to first tackle what we call “micro conversions”. In the context of website optimisation, a micro conversion refers to a partial goal or a preceding step on the way to the main goal (the “macro conversion”). Usually, when a visitor lands on a website, he or she is not necessarily ready to directly purchase a product (i.e. reach a macro conversion). Intermediate steps might include micro conversions like subscribing to a newsletter, or testing a free version. With this partial goal achieved, you can contact these customers again later and thus prepare them for a subsequent macro conversion. Let’s take this example:

  1. A visitor comes to your website and clicks the “View Product” button on the homepage.
  2. The visitor then enters the order quantity on the next page.
  3. By clicking another button, the visitor reaches an online form where he enters personal data, address, and payment method.
  4. By clicking again, he is provided with an overview of the data entered.
  5. After a final click on “Place order now”, he completes the order.

All of the steps before the final purchase are micro conversions. With AB Tasty, you can test different variations of these individual steps to determine the ideal version of each step in the order process. The higher the micro conversion rate, the bigger the macro conversion, which is the success rate for all of your sales.

 

Step 3: Using improved micro conversions to increase macro conversion

You’ve used your analytics solution to create the critical foundation – identifying areas for potential improvement on your website. You have prioritised weak spots and possible optimisation scenarios, and after implementing an A/B test, you were able to achieve significant improvements to your micro conversion(s). What is missing? Your ultimate goal.

 

If you have an E-commerce website, you are not satisfied with mere newsletter subscriptions, are you? As a retailer, you want to sell your products and increase your sales. This principle can be applied to any other digital service provider.

 

For our example in Step 2, this means optimising the final phase of the purchase (“Place order now”) as much as possible. For example, you can test different wordings for the call-to-action (e.g. “Place order now” and “Get my product now”). You can also find out if the conversion rate can be increased by adding trust elements (e.g. a note stating that the product can be easily exchanged).

 

With the AT Internet interface, you don’t need any IT knowledge to measure your website’s performance well beyond your test campaigns, and you may even start new test campaigns and conversion boosters at any time with AB Tasty. This is where the cycle ends.

 

Conclusion

The joint benefits of combining analytics and testing can go very far for you and your digital success. To transform initial web analytics data into a noticeable improvement of your website, remember to follow these important steps:

3 steps to use analytics and AB testing
  • Step 1: Prioritise test ideas and implement them into test scenarios
  • Step 2: Improve micro conversions
  • Step 3: Use improved micro conversions to increase macro conversion

When it comes to analytics and A/B testing, each tool has its own benefits and is definitely worth using. But digital success is a continuous project. To understand this, consider your website as a you’d consider a healthy lifestyle: Only those who remain active over a long period of time and those who eat healthily will remain fit and energetic. This is no different for your website. You must consistently invest in (optimisation) work for your website to remain successful. For this reason, the joint use of testing and analytics is recommended. The combination allows you to look at the development of your website, but also at the development and trends in your target group as a whole.

 

The cherry on top? AT Internet and AB Tasty customers can enable the integration between the two solutions with just one click in the AB Tasty interface, so technical complexities and code implementation are not even obstacles. What are you waiting for? On your mark, get set, and go with one-click integration!

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Author

Sonia Höfs is Marketing Manager at AB Tasty. Passionate about all things digital, her aim is to produce practical, on point content to help marketers of all stripes improve their conversion rates.

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