If you want to know why split testing (also called A/B testing) is a must have for all business owners... no matter what social media content, niche, product or service you're promoting, read on.
As I gain more and more experience with digital marketing, I realize that the most successful business owners are not the ones who magically post and gain a zillion followers.
They're not the ones with hype or smooth words. They're not even the business owners who post every day...
The difference between a successful business owner and the folks who get limited results often lies a a few small details. And those details vary among business owners and niches.
I think this bears repeating... contrary to popular belief, the trick to getting results is not in all the hype.
The key to most successful businesses lies in knowing exactly which element of a particular page, email, or form will be the most impactful for your business. Basically you need to know what works.
And what works is not the same across all businesses. What works for my business may not be the same as what works for yours.
That's why the absolute best way to find out what works for your unique audience is to test various elements of your content.
What Is Split Testing?
Split testing is still the best way to isolate that one component that can turn an ordinary page into a conversion machine.
Split testing is when you show different versions of a page, ad, or email to different people—and track which one gets better results.
Instead of guessing what works…
you let real data from your audience decide.
That means testing everything including headlines (titles), images, buttons, forms, calls to action, your value proposition and more.
There are several WordPress split testing plugins available for your website and online projects.
Here are some options for split testing tools for WordPress. In full transparency, we use Thrive Optimize here at Making It Remotely. But there are a few other options you can choose from.
The Best A/B Split Testing Tools for WordPress
makingitremotely.com
Thrive Optimize for Split Testing
If you’re using the Thrive Architect page builder (which is the one we use), you can use the Thrive Optimize plugin (buy them bundled) to easily A/B split test your landing pages and various page elements.
With Thrive, you can get started without worrying about any code at all. That’s one of the biggest advantages of this solution, thanks to being a native WordPress plugin.
To see a demonstration of how this plugin makes testing easy, watch the video on this page.
The A/B split testing process with Thrive Optimize begins by creating a variation of a page that you built with Thrive Architect.
I enjoy the flexibility this plugin offers – you can either copy your original version of the page and then change a specific part of it to create your new variation or build a new page from scratch.
You also have the freedom to create any number of variations you want.
You can also set a specific goal for your test. Goals are a very powerful way to get results because they keep you focused and motivated as you complete each step.
There are 3 types of goals you can set with Thrive Optimize:
Connecting your experiment to a specific goal is a powerful way of measuring how the different variations of your page perform against each other.
For instance, selecting “revenue” as your goal allows you to set a value for your desired conversion action.
From that point, you can simply observe how a test performs over time with Thrive’s intuitive reporting charts. When you see a clear difference in the revenue of your control version and test version of a page, you can pick a winner. You can set your test to run for a specific time, and let the system choose a winner.
I was also glad to see that Thrive Optimize lets you allocate traffic by any ratio between your active variants.
So if you don’t want traffic to the distributed evenly between your test variants, you can easily set up any ratio of allocation by using a convenient slider control.
Overall, I think that Thrive Optimize is one of those rare kinds of plugins that doesn’t fill itself up with needless complexity. Its only purpose is to simplify A/B split testing and it stays true to that. The ability to set up variants
This focused approach allows the plugin to be powerful without being intimidating.
Create Popups with Optin Monster
OptinMonster is a powerful plugin that lets you create popups for collecting leads and boost sales. While it’s not a standalone A/B testing tool, it comes with its own split testing feature that works great for experimenting with your popups for maximum impact.
In fact, OptinMonster isn’t limited to just a standard popup. You can also create lightbox popups, floating bars, slide-in forms, gamified wheels, and more.
OptinMonster’s appeal primarily stems from its simplicity. I like that it gives you a basic split testing tool because, for things like popups and floating bars, you’re unlikely to need anything more advanced.
The split test lets you create multiple variations of your popup. So if you want to change one specific element of your popup and try different variations, it’s really quick and easy to do so.
I also find the analytics report for monitoring your split test quite refreshing in its simplicity. It doesn’t overwhelm you with scary statistical numbers; there’s only a neat chart based on a few meaningful metrics like conversions, views, and revenue.
As a result, I’ve always found it really easy to interpret the results of every split test I’ve ever run in OptinMonster for popups.
The only downside of its simplicity is that it lacks some features like traffic distribution control for variants of your test. OptinMonster only allows even distribution of traffic during split testing.
But this isn’t a huge deal for beginners who only need a quick and user-friendly solution for testing their popup variations.
Nelio A/B Split Testing Plugin
Nelio A/B Split Testing plugin is a powerful A/B testing plugin that’s specifically designed for WordPress.
It’s fairly advanced and offers an impressive range of customizations that you can utilize to run more complex A/B tests on your site for various purposes.
When I tested Nelio, its excellent variety of tests immediately caught my eye. Most A/B test plugins in WordPress limit you to testing specific areas of your site (which isn’t a bad thing), but Nelio gives you a lot more.
You can create A/B split test for posts, pages, product pages, and even your WordPress theme. And as someone who’s a big believer in the power of titles and headlines, I was very pleased to see the A/B split test for blog post headlines.
In fact, you can even test widgets and navigation menus specifically. This level of precision is what makes Nelio such a great A/B testing plugin that suits a variety of use-case scenarios.
I found the visual reports of active A/B tests very easy to understand, even for beginners. You don’t need to be a pro at statistics to draw meaningful conclusions with the test report Nelio displays.
My only complaint with the plugin is the outdated interface. Nelio’s A/B split testing versatility comes at the cost of a clunky user interface, that’s not laid out in the most intuitive manner.
But overall, it’s one of the most versatile A/B split testing plugins for WordPress that doesn’t restrict you to using any specific page builder for creating your test variations..
WordPress Only Split Hero
Split Hero is one of the few WordPress-only A/B testing solutions on the market. It’s a SaaS tool but it syncs directly with WordPress via its dedicated plugin.
I appreciate Split Hero a lot for the fact that it doesn’t try to be a fancy tool. Instead, it focuses on being user-friendly, giving you only the essential A/B testing features that websites will find most useful.
That means you can run traditional A/B split tests with simple pre-defined goals, like page conversions. For a given experiment, you can test up to four variations of a page at a time.
I think this maximum limit of four isn’t ideal, but in my experience, small businesses don’t often need to create a bunch of variations anyway. Still, I’d have liked to see a larger limit, or like Thrive Optimize, no limits at all!
I was also glad to see the scheduling features, so that your test can start and expire on your custom schedule. This adds more control and precision to A/B experiments.
The tool is also compatible with all WordPress page builders, including the default Gutenberg and classic WordPress editors. Personally, I’m quite fond of this flexibility because Split Hero doesn’t restrict you to a specific page builder.
But there’s an unfortunate tradeoff involved here. And that’s the fact that Split Hero doesn’t offer any assistance when it comes to creating different versions of your page.
That’s something you’ll have to take care of yourself with whatever method suits you (i.e. creating each page variation with a plugin like SeedProd or Elementor or using WordPress editor).
Behavior Analytics with HotJar
Hotjar is a powerful behavioral analytics tool. While A/B split testing isn’t one of its features, it makes the analysis of your test results super convenient with its visual heatmaps.
I mainly like Hotjar for the feature it primarily specializes in: heatmaps and click tracking. It’s a helpful way of analyzing how your visitors are interacting with your website and the variations you’ve set up in your a/b test.
The heatmaps when combined with user recordings can paint a vivid picture, revealing any points of friction in your user’s journey through the funnel, and popular click areas at the same time.
I think Hotjar can be a valuable addition to your suite of analytics tools if you’re looking for a more visual and qualitative level analysis.
Though you’ll need an a/b testing tool that integrates with Hotjar like Optimizely or Convert to create your experiments. Hotjar’s role is only limited to providing visual analytics of the experiments you’ve set up with other tools.
Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel
We're helping creative business owners go from stuck and confused to empowered and thriving one video at a time.
