A/B testing: The key for the perfect social media content

How to do A/B testing and improve your content on social media. Sometimes it can be very difficult for social media accounts to figure out how followers prefer to see the content they share. That’s why the idea is to experiment with the content and how to transmit it to people. Thus, if you want to know a way to boost your social media and find out what works best on your profiles, this is the blog for you. Here, we’ll show you how to do an A/B test to improve your content.

What is an A/B Test?

The A/B test is a way of sharing content with small changes each time. The aim of this is to discover which of them is the most effective for your target audience. Besides, this is a very popular technique used in social media marketing strategies.

The best way to carry out this test is by dividing your social media audience into two parts.

These don’t have to have similar characteristics, all you need to do is make some changes in the same post for each group. Once published, the responses and interactions of the post will help you identify which of these changes is the most effective. For this, you must take a look at the metrics of your social media account or your website.

Besides, this type of test, also known as “split test” will only be used with one change at a time. Otherwise, you will have to do many tests with a variety of images, articles, and advertisements. What’s important about this is that you follow a control of the tests. This is because if you carry out many tests at the same time, it’s likely that this will influence the results of the test or your own account.

How can the A/B Test help your social media strategy?

A/B tests help you dispel the assumptions you have about the content of social media. Thanks to these tests you will be able to know which are the publication formats preferred by your target audience.

Besides, these tests allow you to understand how well a publication ranks according to its format (image or video). Depending on which position is better and which one gets the best interactions, you can make changes to that same post to boost your account and promote conversation among your followers.

The good thing about this type of test is that it can be carried out on all platforms so that you don’t make the same publication on LinkedIn and Twitter. After all, we do know that they do not work the same. Then, you will get better information on which one works better on social media and which one is more in tune with the platform.

However, this doesn’t stop there. You can also keep making small changes to further refine your strategies and help your organic content grow. After this, you can then include those elements preferred by your followers on paid ads.

What types of sites do A/B testing?

Although we already explained that this type of tests can be carried out on any type of platform, these are some of the pages that can see the greatest benefit from the strategy:

Lead generation

Lead generation pages are the sites for the sale of services or the search for potential customers.

A lead can refer to the acquisition of an email that can later be used for commercial purposes.

Media

This is ideally used for editorial testing on both web and offline content.

They are focused on buying the success of the contents and then personalizing them according to the type of user they want to reach.

E-commerce

E-commerce focused websites are constantly testing to see how their own website is performing.

Thanks to this, they ensure the success of their publications.

Then, they also continue optimizing the home pages, the product page, or the product descriptions.

What type of test to take?

These are some of the varieties of tests that you can carry out according to your objectives and what you want to know about your business:

A/B test: This is the most common and best known by all, with this you will make two changes to the same page or publication with the same URL.
Split test or redirect test. A/B testing. This is the second most used by marketing agencies. Here, you will create two versions of the same post but with different URLs.
Multivariate test or MVT: This type of test helps you measure the impact of each of the different modifications that are made to a page. For example, you can create a version B of the page in which you change a banner, the color of a text, and the organization of some elements at the same time. A/B testing. Thanks to this type of test, you can see the impact of each of these modifications on the final result. On the other hand, this type of test is more advanced, although not too complicated to configure.

How to find A/B test ideas?

The first thing you must do before starting the test is to identify a conversion problem in your social media. Otherwise, you won’t be able to carry out an effective test or strategy to improve your social media.

With the help of some tools that we will mention later in the blog, you will be able to collect all the data for the creation of the hypotheses. That’s why you must follow the following steps to start the tour of your tests:

It must be related to a previously identified problem.
It has to include a possible solution to the problem.
If the problem identified is a high abandonment rate in a registration form, a valid hypothesis would be: “Shortening the form by eliminating optional fields will increase the number of contacts received.
It must include the expected result, which is directly related to the KPI you’re going to measure.

What elements can you test on a website?

Here, we present a list of crucial elements to be approved by companies on their online platforms.

Many companies don’t take into account the importance of these elements. As a result, they experience an inability to explain their conversion rate. Ideally, you shouldn’t offer a long list of items to test if you want to focus on the items to identify for the A/B test.

Business model

Here you must rethink the model of your business to obtain greater benefits. For this, you shouldn’t only focus on one thing or the sale of the same product when you can expand and complement what you already have with more services or products.

Call to action

The call to action is one of the most important buttons on websites and one of the most relevant elements on social media.

As a result, color, message, shape, and location can greatly impact your conversion rate.

Buttons

Buttons have a vital role in websites and it’s that visitors interact with them.

Thus, if you want to know if these work or if you can optimize them in any way, try different font sizes, shapes, colors.

Besides, you can even animate them if you want. Anything goes to attract users.

Images

An image speaks louder than a thousand words, so you must do the test with different images depending on what you do.

You can also play with the size and type of the image, as well as its position on the website.

The website’s structure

The web structure is an element that must be constantly changing in each of its categories.

All changes are to optimize the preferences of your followers and visitors.

In this sense, you can add a carousel, choose static images, change your banners, show your best-selling products, recommend products, etc.

Algorithms, A/B testing

Many are unaware of all the types of algorithms that exist on social media.

With each of them, you can convert your users into loyal and frequent customers of your accounts.

How to set up an A/B test?

Here, we explain in 6 steps how you can configure your own A/B test to optimize your social media and online platforms to get higher conversion from them.

Define your goals

To start, you must clearly define the objectives of the A/B test that you are going to carry out.

For this, the ideal is to think about what you want to improve and create a hypothesis to achieve it.

Some examples of A/B test objectives:

Improve KPIs. This is divided into many points. For example, you can improve the time of permanence, the number of page views, the bounce rate, the abandonment rate of the shopping cart, and the means of purchase.
Increase conversions. Here, you can increase sales, website inquiries, and subscriptions, application downloads, or registrations for an important business event.

Define what changes to make

Some examples of changes in a website that you may want to study with an A / B test:

Content: copy, titles/headings, colors, font, images, videos, etc. Web design, templates, and CSS style sheets. Prices and promotions in eCommerce.
Call-to-actions: buttons, text, button size, and font. Colors, typography, and spacing.
Forms: number of fields, required fields, requested data, One-page checkout, or multi-page checkout.
Web usability: above the fold, conversion funnel, buyer journey, landing page, thank you page, menu, sidebar, footer.

Create the A / B test

There are many tools to create A/B tests, and even if most of these are paid, some are free. For example, Google Analytics is a tool that, with a little practice, allows you to create your own test.

With it, you will be able to use a simple technique to create different versions of the same test. A/B testing. This way, you can redirect traffic to your website and know its number of unique visitors. Here, we’ll show you some of the tools that you can use to perform your A/B test.

A/B test with Google Analytics.
Optimizely.com
Nelio AB Testing (Plugin for WordPress).

There are also other tools for calculating the sample size:

A/B Test Sample Size Calculator (Optimizer).
Sample Size Calculator (The Survey System).
AB Test Guide.
Sample Size Calculator (Evan’s Awesome A/B Tools).

Wait and be patient (number of users), A/B testing

This isn’t another step to set up your test. However, you must remember that these types of tests don’t have a set amount of time to do them.

On the other hand, they do take into account the number of people who interact with the posts.

Thus, once you have a large number of people as part of the test, you can stop the experiment.

After this, you can start to study and compare the results.

Choose the winning version

After the analysis, you can easily know which the winning version on your social media accounts was.

However, if the results are very close, it is best to use support tools to choose the winning version:

Split Test Calculator.

GetDataDriven.com

Measure and adjust, A/B testing

After completing the entire test, you must first review the interactions and behaviors of the users.

After this, you can start to adjust your online strategy.

For example, you can perfect your strategy and the way you are going to address your visitors.

However, this isn’t a one-time thing, you must keep improving your techniques over time.

BluCactus, your ally in Digital marketing

BluCactus international marketing agency serves clients all over the world.

Our specialty? The creation of web designs and SEO positioning in online searches.

Besides, our group of experts is dedicated to helping businesses and brands succeed in one of the most competitive sectors in the market, the digital world.

BluCactus will accompany you every step that your brand takes.

This goes from the creation of the branding of your business to the creation of content.

Our focus is on supporting you with the development of your website or the administration of your accounts on social media.