What is Split Testing?

Split testing is simply testing 2 variations of the same variable within a particular marketing tactic. For example: ‘landing page A’ vs. ‘landing page b’ or ‘ad creative 1′ vs. ‘ad creative 2′. Or even testing position 2 vs position 5. It’s called split testing because you are splitting up your traffic to experiment 2 versions of whatever it is you are testing.

Split testing can be granular or broad. You can get real specific and just test 2 ad creatives with only a 1 word or punctuation difference. Or broadly test, simply being ‘ad 1′ competing with completely different ad; ‘ad 2′. The same goes with landing pages. You can just change the title tag, h1 tag, one picture or broad test 2 completely different pages with different colors schemes, verbiages and tags.

Why Split Testing is Important

Hopefully, I explained enough about what is Split testing. Because, I’m ready to talk about its importance.

Split testing is important for the simple fact that it improves your whole marketing campaign. I’ve watched a completely new ad creative make a $4k difference. I’ve changed h1 tags/call to actions that increased conversion rates over 75-500%. I’ve seen keyword changes in the title tags increase a PPC campaign’s quality score and at the same time improve the website’s SEO rankings.

It kind of goes with that saying; “You never know what’s best until you try.”

It doesn’t matter what type of marketing you do, there is always room for split testing. You have ads that are already doing well in Google AdWords!? then just change that period at the end of the sentence to a ! or change : to – , maybe you can just add the dynamic {KeyWord:Same as Ad 1} insertion. Maybe you’re just doing media buying and banner advertising. Change the color of that well performing banner’s background. Switch that guy with a girl. Change ‘buy now’ to ‘act now’. These are just a few different ways to test different versions of your marketing tactics.

You don’t even have to change your marketing tactics. All you have to do is send half of your traffic one way and the other half another and see what kind of data you can pull up. Almost aways it’s obvious which is doing better. But if you can’t tell which is best, give it more time. Sometime you’ll end up sticking with what has been working. But now you know. Or change the way you want things to look aesthetically. After all it’s nice to to please yourself every once in a while. BUT, don’t give aesthetics a shot until all split testing has proven that it doesn’t matter which you use.

Even though you are only testing 1 variable, their are many other factors that decided that ad 1 was a better choice. Such as; maybe a blue banner is great for sites with a higher percentage of male traffic and a red one for the kids and women’s sites. Or maybe that new ad is only getting more traffic because Google is giving it more because that h1 or title tag change increased your quality score.

The Disadvantages of Split Testing

This brings me up to the disadvantages to split testing. You may see which gets more traffic or better converting traffic. But it will never tell you why one way worked better that the other. This is why you always have to record circumstances when split testing. Like seasonality, site visitors visited before yours, secret search algorithms, traffic gender, demographics, off-line advertising, etc. The biggest disadvantage to split testing is time. Split testing takes time. Should I wait 2 weeks or 1 day? Or sometimes you may feel I don’t have time to see which works best, so you just put what you feel is best. But remember, you aren’t the one buying that product. It’s your visitors buying products, so its imperative you let your visitors decide which is best. Multi-variant testing can speed up the process. But, it can also make the it harder to determine what change increased conversion rate.

Split Testing is Valuable to internet Marketing

Finding out why ‘ad 1′ beat ‘ad 2′ is probably the hardest, but at the same time the most valuable information you can find. Because sometimes through ad testing you can find a niche/advantage you have over your competitors that you can now use to leverage more conversions or traffic.

The main thing I’m trying to get across is, whether you are using 1 marketing tactic, a 100 tactics or no tactics at all. There’s always room for improvement. Why now test and see what’s best for you, your website and most of all, your visitors.