How to Use Surveys to Improve the Efficiency of A/B Testing
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Improving user experience is one of the most important concerns of digital marketers, site developers, and business owners.
Catching the eye of your site’s visitors and encouraging them to spend more time on your pages and finally buy your products/services is not an easy task.
You should know if your audiences are interested in the different features of your site. In fact, if you want higher conversion rates, you have to provide users with what they love.
But the question is how to do that. A/B testing is one of the most efficient ways of improving your user experience and optimizing your digital appearance. You just need to learn what it is and how you can efficiently include it in your digital strategy.
Using surveys has proved to be useful when it comes to implementing A/B testing for your website. In this article, I’m going to introduce a few kinds of surveys that will help you find better A/B tests and run them effectively to improve your performance in digital marketing.
First, it’s good to know what A/B testing is and how you can benefit from it.
The process of comparing two versions of a web page, text, or other marketing assets and evaluating the difference in output is A/B testing (also known as split testing).
You can easily achieve this by offering one version to one party and the other to another. You will then see how each variant performs.
In the example below, you can see the original version of a webpage (control) and the edited version of it (variation) for A/B testing.
A/B testing is getting more popular among marketers, business owners, and website designers as it has many benefits. Along with website A/B testing, A/B tests on social media are also very popular these days.
A/B tests compare the output of two web pages where a single variable differs between them, like the copy in the title.
The findings allow you to quantify the effect on visitors of any one factor and help you decide whether to make any changes or not. So A/B tests are essential for improving your web and social media experience and let you improve your eCommerce performance.
Before implementing and running an A/B test, surveys allow us to collect qualitative and quantitative data to help shape, refine, and test hypotheses, and ensure you’re running the correct A/B tests.
Surveys can’t guarantee that you run a five-star test, of course, but they will make sure that any test you run has a higher chance of winning.
But how do you use surveys for a better A/B test for your website? Here are some useful methods in this regard to help you improve your tests.
The best time to gain insights from customers is right after they purchase from you. You can ask them to fill in your survey right after the purchase to get the points fast and fresh. This is a perfect approach to get feedback from audiences and manage your online reputation.
Brendan Hufford is the founder of Photo MBA, he surveys his new customers immediately after purchase, and one of the questions he finds most helpful is “What’s one question you hope this course will help you answer?”
It contributes to changes in his on-page copy and improves conversion.
For post-sale surveys, here are a few additional suggested questions:
As an example, the Condoly team has used this method for choosing the homepage’s featured image and some other elements on internal pages.
After adding a “Market Analysis” item in their listings, they observed a huge amount of traffic to their internal pages. Getting post-purchase insights from customers helped them learn that this item might be of great use to other potential customers.
As a result, they’ve seen an increase in their positive feedback and testimonials.
Understanding those who do not convert is just as critical as understanding your customers. You’ll have to collect some kind of information beforehand, usually an email address, to survey these non-converters.
You can ask the following questions in the survey you’re going to send:
Take note of the first question; there will always be individuals who, in the first place, were never involved in the buying process. That doesn’t mean, however, that they will not take a survey. Asking a qualifying question, such as, at least, “were you interested in buying?” helps you weed out prospects that are not serious.
You should change your landing page to address these questions, increasing conversions.
You can also ask the following questions from non-converters:
The “five-second test” is one famous user-research survey. But what is a five-second test?
Five-second testing is a qualitative form of analysis in which you present a screenshot of your website or product to a test customer for just five seconds. Then you take this image away and ask numerous questions about what they saw in the photo.
The five-second test is a perfect way to test the clarity of a landing page, the principle being that the landing page could use some work if a user can’t remember what a landing page was about after five seconds.
There are two situations where running this test is excellent:
I suggest the following as to what questions to ask:
Sites like Useberry provide you with 5-second tests to improve your A/B tests by data analysis and qualitative research.
A/B testing is a great method for improving your performance in digital marketing and increasing the satisfaction of your audience. Surveys let you use A/B tests more efficiently.
Of course, you need some other techniques to enhance your A/B testing strategy. For example, using UTM links is really helpful when it comes to A/B testing and lets you make the most of them.
Guest author: Tom Siani is an online marketing expert with more than 4 years of experience in the digital industry. He is also collaborating with some well-known brands in order to generate traffic, create sales funnels, and increase online sales. He has written a considerable number of articles about social media marketing, brand marketing, blogging, search visibility, etc.
