What is A/B Testing?
A/B testing (also known as split testing) is the method of comparing two or more versions of a digital marketing piece – a webpage or an email template, for example – against each other to determine which version performs better with your healthcare practice’s target audience. A/B testing helps marketing teams make data-driven decisions for future marketing materials by taking the guesswork out of design, content and layout. To keep the testing controlled, each variation should only change 1-2 elements at a time. This way, your team can measure and collect audience engagement with each experience variation. The analytical results can show whether changing the experience had a positive, negative, or neutral effect on audience behavior.
When Should My Practice Use A/B Testing?
A/B testing is an essential part of all marketing analytics. It should become a regular step in your practice’s marketing processes and reporting. Here are some examples of what to A/B test on a regular basis:
- Button placement and/or color
- Call-to-actions
- Email subject lines
- Email template layouts
- Form length (number of fields)
- Form placement on page
- Icon design
- Image choices
- Page headlines
- Sales language
- Taglines
- Webpage layouts
Benefits of A/B Testing
There are several benefits of A/B testing for all your practice’s marketing materials. Data-driven decisions can help your healthcare practice increase website traffic, appointment request form competitions and email open rates – all of which can have a massive impact on overall practice revenue. The best part of A/B testing is that it’s easy to implement at no additional cost and minimal additional effort.
Increased User Engagement
A/B testing is an effective way to improve user engagement on your website and within your email database. When your practice’s marketing team analyzes the results of A/B testing, it will help make decisions moving forward, improving your content, design and layouts that drive better engagement. It’s surprising how a small change can have such a high impact on engagement. Here are some examples:
- Test an email out using two different button colors. Which one performed better with more clicks through to your website?
- Create two landing pages with the online form in two different places. Which one received more form completions?
- Send an email to half your database using one subject line, and another subject line to the other half. Which subject line had a better open rate?
Reduced Bounce & Unsubscribe Rates
Regularly reviewing website and email analytics will help identify the highest traffic areas of your online content, as well as the low-converting or high drop-off content that need improvement. The goal of your digital content is to keep your visitors’ attention as long as possible. Trust and credibility are hard to build from an email subject line or a social media post, but that is where it all starts for most prospective patients. You want your email content to resonate with your audience enough to click through to your website for even more information and resources. You want to keep your website visitors on your website as long as possible.
What you don’t want is to lose your viewers because your content is deemed irrelevant to your audience. Without A/B testing, you put your healthcare practice at risk of high bounce rates on your website and unsubscribe rates from your emails.
- Bounce Rate refers to the percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.
- Unsubscribe Rate refers to the percentage of users who have opted-out from the mailing list after an email campaign.
High bounce rates have a negative impact on your practice’s website’s search engine optimization (SEO). A high unsubscribe rate can have a negative impact on emails hitting inboxes successfully – they could end up in spam folders instead. A/B testing will help your marketing team avoid running these risks.
Higher Conversion Rates
Testing variations of web pages and emails is a powerful way for healthcare practices to make positive changes that successfully lead prospective patients through the customer journey – which content, design and layout choices are going to be the most effective in future marketing. A/B testing also helps admissions teams discover how prospective patients prefer to be communicated with. Did they respond better to online forms or phone calls? Did they open the email or search for resources on your website? Analyzing user behavior decisions through A/B testing will produce higher conversion rates across all your marketing campaigns.
- Conversion rate refers to the percentage of website users who have completed a desired action – most commonly an online form submission, a phone call or a file download.
If you’re searching for a strategic partner who understands your healthcare marketing needs, choose Points Group today.
