What is the best way to develop a testing plan for your CRO strategy?

1 Define your goals and metrics

The first step is to define what you want to achieve with your CRO strategy and how you will measure your progress and success. You need to set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals that align with your business objectives and customer needs. For example, you might want to increase the sales of a particular product by 10% in three months. Then, you need to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will track your goal, such as conversion rate, average order value, and revenue per visitor. You also need to establish a baseline for your current performance and a target for your desired outcome.

2 Analyze your data and identify opportunities

The next step is to collect and analyze data from various sources, such as web analytics, heatmaps, surveys, user feedback, and competitor research, to understand how your website is performing and where the gaps and opportunities are. You need to look for patterns and insights that reveal the behavior, preferences, pain points, and motivations of your visitors, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of your website. For example, you might find out that your product page has a high bounce rate, a low time on page, and a low click-through rate to the checkout page. This indicates that you need to improve your product page to make it more engaging, persuasive, and user-friendly.

3 Prioritize your hypotheses and test ideas

The third step is to formulate hypotheses and test ideas based on your data analysis and your goals. A hypothesis is a statement that predicts how a change in a website element will affect a conversion metric. A test idea is a specific variation of a website element that you want to test against the original. You need to prioritize your hypotheses and test ideas according to their potential impact, feasibility, and relevance. For example, you might hypothesize that adding social proof and urgency to your product page will increase the conversion rate by 5%. Your test idea might be to add customer reviews, ratings, and a countdown timer to your product page.

4 Choose your testing method and tools

The fourth step is to choose the most suitable testing method and tools for your CRO strategy. There are different types of testing methods, such as A/B testing, multivariate testing, and split testing, that vary in their complexity, cost, and accuracy. You need to consider the pros and cons of each method and select the one that matches your resources, goals, and hypotheses. You also need to choose the tools that will help you create, run, and analyze your tests, such as Google Optimize, Optimizely, or VWO. You need to ensure that the tools are compatible with your website platform, analytics software, and testing method.

5 Run and monitor your tests

The fifth step is to run and monitor your tests according to your testing plan. You need to follow the best practices for testing, such as defining a sample size, setting a duration, running one test at a time, and avoiding external factors that might skew your results. You need to monitor your tests regularly and check the performance of your variations against your metrics. You also need to look for any errors, anomalies, or feedback that might affect your tests.

6 Analyze and apply your results

The final step is to analyze and apply your results after your tests are completed. You need to use statistical methods and tools to determine if your results are valid, reliable, and significant. You need to compare your variations with your original and see which one performed better and why. You also need to evaluate if your results matched your hypotheses and goals, and what you learned from them. Then, you need to apply your results to your website and optimize it accordingly. You also need to document your results and share them with your team and stakeholders.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?