Find out how adaptive testing can help you optimise pages by boosting engagement with improved CTAs, headlines, and multimedia.
An adaptive test lets you assess how small adjustments to your page influence its conversion rate. You can experiment with up to five different variations at once, and over time, the best-performing version will be automatically shown to visitors more frequently.
Why choose adaptive testing over A/B testing?
A/B testing is a simple testing method. Visitor traffic is evenly divided among different page variations. Eventually, it becomes evident which variation performs best, and the experimenter manually selects a winner. After that, the winning version is shown to all visitors. A/B testing can be very valuable, but it can have some limitations compared to using adaptive testing; these include:
- Users must wait for a sufficient sample size before manually choosing a winner for each test.
- During the testing phase, half of the site's visitors are exposed to the less effective page variation.
- Users can only test two variations at a time.
Adaptive testing goes beyond traditional A/B testing by offering more flexibility and automation, making experimentation more efficient, data-driven, and user-friendly, helping marketers achieve better results with less manual effort.
How to create a test variation
You can run a test on any published page
1. Head to your content either in landing or web pages and select more > run test
2. Select adaptive test and hit next
3. You can add up-to five variations by clicking add variations. To delete any variant press the recycle bin.
4. Update the page content for your page variants by selecting the page on the drop down.
When creating your variations you might want to consider the following types of variables for testing:
- Type of content you're offering: Switch it up, try offering a eBook versus a video or brochure
- Experiment with the formatting and style of your content: For instance, you can compare plain paragraphs with bullet points, or test a longer block of text against a shorter one.
- Image: try testing different images to see how they impact the conversion rate. You could try a simple image or a infographic
- Form fields: test varying the length of your form, which form performs better a long or short form? Or try asking for just an email address compared to requesting additional information
- CTA: Use different types of CTA, maybe text based over a button or image CTA.
5. Once all the changes have been made hit publish
View testing data
Performance data is collected for all page variations during the test. It is possible to view how each page is performing by following these steps:
1. Find your page and hit on the performance tab to take you to the performance review page.
2. This page will show you all of the data collected from all of the test pages and which page performs best
3. Once you have decided the best performing page you can end the test and select the page that you wish to show to all visitors
Author: Mel Baker
Inbound Marketer