Conversion Rate Optimisation and A/B Testing

While often used in the same vein of conversation, these two terms are not so similar.

While first reading about how A/B testing is used, when it's used, and some real-world examples, I instinctively thought that CRO was essentially the same thing. The simplest way of differentiating the two is to view A/B testing as small picture, big changes, and CRO as big picture, big changes. Allow me to break that down!

A/B Testing

Say a company has a website that is performing decently. It works and is providing the company revenue, but it can certainly perform better. One solution could be to send half of all webpage visitors to the preexisting website and the other half to the same website with changes that range from minuscule to massive. (HBR, 2017) Albeit, this method works significantly better on the iota scale, it would be incorrect to say that the changes must be small. From here, we can use Google Analytics to gauge which website has a better performance. This is ultimately up to the client or company in terms of what they deem as "better", but some of the metrics they may care about could be more clicks, sign-ups, or purchases. This leads us to make "data-informed decisions that shift business conversations from 'we think' to 'we know.'"(optimizely, 2023)

Conversion Rate Optimization

Now that same company specifically wants visitors to become customers. Well, where would you begin? You should always begin by setting realistic conversion goals. This could be increasing ad views or leads generated by 20% over a year. Typically, you would then want to optimize the area of the conversion funnel that is responsible for the most amount of visitors and traffic. Now that you have located the issue and defined the goals, you can link it back to the A/B tests and (hopefully) begin increasing the CR. (optimizely, 2023)

Examples of companies utilizing these tools

Unveil is a company with expertise in design tools and feedback. They offer a free trial to any new customers who are interested in their services. While this has always been an option, it wasn't made clear on their landing page as seen below.

Utilizing A/B testing, they decided to make only TWO slight changes- removing the pricing option above and changing the "from just $1 per month" to "join the beta for free today!" Half of their viewers viewed the original page while the other half viewed the new landing page. These two changes were responsible for 31% more signups! (targetinternet, 2020)

While a free sign-up may not sound like profit, let alone revenue, it is growth. This is what the company set out to increase and it worked. Out of these free sign-ups, some of them will enjoy the feedback enough to continue using it at an expense.

Another fantastic example comes from the Highrise HQ marketing team (adtaxi, 2022). The team was worried that their landing page, which was essentially a wall of text with some fancy graphics and photos, was turning away potential customers. What did they do? They shortened everything and added a photo of a woman smiling. All of this incentivized a 103% increase in conversion rates. This simple change was not only very easy to test but equally as easy to design and implement. (signalvnoise, 2011)

While the goal you set out to accomplish may be daunting, you can always start small by utilizing A/B testing and CRO!