Should your call-to-action Make An Appointment button be on the top of your page or the bottom? Should it be positioned on the left side of the screen or the right side? In the world of marketing, testing can help determine best practices through hard data.
In the past, marketers and businesses focused solely on split testing, also known as A/B testing. Today, though, with the web and digital media, multivariate testing is available to analyze countless combinations of marketing tactics.
When launching a website or landing page, many businesses – including those in healthcare – are often hesitant about testing. They are set on their style and want to stick with it. They also don’t understand the difference between A/B and multivariate test. Are you one of them? Here’s a quick rundown:
A/B Testing
If your site currently has a low volume of search traffic, A/B testing is the better option for your organization; multivariable tests require a lot of traffic to return viable results. A/B tests are also extremely useful when competing page designs are up for debate.
Using A/B testing can tell you what is resonating with your audience. Keep in mind that A/B testing can be more than just having two variations of a website. In fact, an A/B/C/D test is a still an A/B test.
Multivariate Testing
In contrast, a multivariate test attempts to validate individual elements or combinations of elements on a page rather than the entire page. As mentioned earlier, it requires a page with much higher search traffic and much more user input.
In multivariate situations, the page elements are swapped around instead of changed completely. That means, for example, one version may have a graphic on the bottom and a call-to-action on the top right, while another involves the call-to-action on the bottom left and the photo in the top center.
The overall wire-frame layout of the page, though, will remain static from one version to the other. This method of testing is much more complex and analytical but can drive much more accurate and in-depth data.
Both A/B and multivariate testing are great methods for identifying what resonates with your audiences. For more information on both these testing methods, contact Wax Custom Communications at 305-350-5700 or visit waxcom.com.
