Last month I felt motivated to A/B test a key conversion point on nzflatmates in an attempt to introduce some science into how we go about designing pages. This was our first attempt at an A/B test so I thought I’d share what we learned…
For those who don’t know, an A/B test (on the web at least) is when you serve two different versions of the same page to find out which one performs better at achieving the goal of the page. i.e. 50% of your users get page A and the other 50% get page B.
In the case of nzflatmates the key conversion page on the site is the “upgrade to GOLD Membership” page where members are invited to upgrade their free membership to a GOLD Membership for a small fee. This is how nzflatmates generates over 90% of its revenue. How well this page performs can be measured by how many people upgrade to GOLD.
Page A
Page B
We served the two different versions of the page by serving page A to members with an even number Member Number and page B to members with an odd number Member Number. The result? Page B is generating 11% more upgrades than page A. Switching every member over to page B will add a few extra dollars to the site’s bottom line each year, for really not a lot of effort.
So if you’re in the business of building or running web sites I strongly recommend giving A/B testing a go! It can be used to test all sorts of pages…sign up pages, upgrade pages, product pages with “add to cart”, checkouts etc etc. Basically any page where you have a clear action that you want the user to perform.
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