A/B testing is a marketing technique used to determine which of two versions of an advertisement, website or other promotional material produces the most conversions. This is done by splitting traffic between the two versions and tracking how many people take action on the site (e.g., sign up for a newsletter) after seeing each version.
A/B testing is fantastic. It allows you to compare two or more copies of the same page element, sponsored ad, or other variable to see which works better. To put it another way, it’s a critical method to enhance your content, raise user engagement, and increase conversion rates throughout your whole site. What’s not to enjoy about that?
Furthermore, with A/B testing, the findings are transparent and self-evident. If you test two versions of a mailing, for example, the results will show which version “worked” better based on the numbers.
But how can you figure out why version A or B worked better, and how do you get a better understanding of your campaign’s performance?
Secondary objectives may assist you in this situation. Let me explain why secondary objectives are important in A/B testing and how you can use them to your own marketing strategy.
A/B Testing: Primary vs. Secondary Goals
Let’s clarify what “main” and “secondary” objectives in A/B testing imply before we get started.
Simply said, a primary aim is your major objective. When you conduct an A/B test, it’s the primary objective of your campaign or the goal you’re trying to accomplish.
Let’s pretend you’re a personal trainer. On your landing page, you have a message inviting visitors to join up for a free trial week or taster session. Perhaps it resembles this scene from My Soul Sanctuary:
Because you’re aiming to boost your sign-up statistics, your main objective may be to figure out how many individuals click through to finish this form.
Secondary objectives, on the other hand, provide you with more information on user behavior and how they engage with your website. They assist you in achieving your main objective by giving a comprehensive analysis of your A/B test outcomes.
The personal trainer, for example, may want to see how many individuals share their material on social media or sign up for their newsletter when visiting their website:
Rather of monitoring submission form sign-ups alone, knowing the responses to these questions provides extra information into how well the material is doing.
You must monitor main and secondary objectives if you want to boost conversions, expand your company, and enhance your ROI. Otherwise, you’ll only have half the information you need to successfully promote your company.
7 Secondary A/B Testing Goals to Track in GA
Are you ready to track some secondary objectives? Here are seven metrics I recommend measuring as part of your A/B testing to get you started.
1. Add-to-Cart Procedures
You may use the “add-to-cart” statistic to see how frequently consumers add goods to their basket and which pages receive the most traffic by tracking it. You may divide your audience into two groups based on how many times the “add-to-cart” action is triggered:
- Shopping cart abandonment refers to individuals who add goods to their basket but then delete them.
- individuals who look at a product page but do not add it to their shopping cart
To monitor cart activities, you may utilize Google Tag Manager (GTM). GA provides step-by-step directions on how to do this. Once you’ve got everything set up, you can start running A/B testing. For example, you might see whether more customers check out if the product is promoted with a discount, and so on.
2. Use of the Site’s Features
It may seem self-evident, but keeping track of how frequently visitors engage with certain website elements is beneficial. Otherwise, it’s difficult to determine if your website provides visitors with the positive user experience they want.
You could monitor aspects like how many times users click CTA buttons, how many users interact with your live chat, and how many people click on your email address to contact you as part of your A/B testing.
Depending on your company objectives, you’ll monitor different characteristics. Betterment, an investing website, for example, offers a variety of elements worth monitoring, such as quizzes and investment calculators:
You may be tempted to see whether the calculator works better if it’s positioned higher on the page, or if changing colors imply more clicks in the case above.
3. Angry Page Features Clicking
If you’re not acquainted with fury clicking, it’s when someone clicks on a website element repeatedly but nothing occurs. This usually happens when a website element seems to be clickable but isn’t, or when a link on your page isn’t functioning.
You can use Google Analytics to see whether a particular page is generating a lot of anger clicks, for example. You may also observe whether a particular kind of page element, such as a button, line of text, or picture, produces a lot of fury clicks.
Rage clicking may irritate your audience to the point that they lose faith in your company and abandon your website, so it’s critical to figure out what’s causing it. Again, you can use Google Tag Manager to monitor angry clicks in GA by adding the necessary tags onto the HTML where you want to begin tracking.
4. Highlighting Text on a Page
Why does it matter if someone highlights a section of your page’s text? There are two explanations for this.
To begin, kids may be highlighting the content so that they may respond to it. If a lot of people highlight and copy your phone number, for example, it may require a hyperlink.
People may, on the other hand, highlight text in order to copy it into Google and search for similar material. In such scenario, there’s a possibility your website isn’t giving them the answers they need. Obviously, this final situation is terrible from a marketing standpoint.
What’s the best way to keep track of a secondary objective like this? In the first case, you might do an A/B test to determine whether linking your phone number increases the amount of calls you get. Compare the results in Google Analytics to see whether it’s worth maintaining the connection.
5. Newsletter subscriptions
Newsletters are a fantastic method to reach out to a larger audience while also delivering high-quality, useful material to your subscribers’ inboxes. However, you must first get people to sign up for your newsletter (which isn’t always simple).
There are a few factors you may experiment with during A/B testing if you have a low number of email subscribers. For instance, you might see whether visitors are more inclined to sign up for your newsletter during the checkout process or if a brighter, more colorful banner on your landing page leads to more subscribers.
Newsletters and related material, such as free tips and e-books, may actually help you develop brand trust, so this isn’t something you should dismiss as a secondary objective. In fact, it should be at the top of every marketer’s priorities list.
Pageviews by category and subcategory
Pageviews by category and subcategory are equally significant.
Visitors will find it simpler to discover what they’re searching for if your category page includes a list of related sites on your site.
Subcategory pages are a subset of category pages that enable you to provide a customer’s online experience additional structure.
On these pages, what should you be looking for? You might, for example, keep track of how many people click on certain subcategory sites, your bounce rate for different pages, and if there’s a subcategory with extremely low interaction.
Then you may experiment with altering the order of the categories or making the subcategories clearer and more condensed, as well as optimizing the titles of each page. Make the most of the capabilities GA provides by tracking both category and subcategory occurrences.
7. Buttons for Sharing on Social Media
When others share your material, it’s fantastic. It not only indicates you’re connecting with your target audience, but it also means they’re telling their friends about you. To put it another way, social media shares are free advertising, which is always a plus.
In terms of A/B testing, you may want to keep track of how many people are sharing your page content and whether any platform is outperforming the others. Perhaps no one reads your articles, but your videos are regularly shared, or perhaps more people share your material on Instagram than anywhere else.
GA can assist with this to some degree, but you should also look at the analytics capabilities on your social networking sites.
How to Measure Your Secondary A/B Testing Goals
So, you’ve set some objectives for yourself. Now you need a way to track your progress and determine whether you’re on track to meet your targets.
To begin, you must first determine your baseline measurements. To establish an acceptable end goal, you must first understand how your website and all of its features are functioning right now.
If you don’t have your baseline measurements yet, go back and collect some information so you can monitor your progress.
Do you have a starting point? Great. Let’s look at how Google Optimize may help you track those crucial secondary objectives.
Google Optimize is a Google Analytics add-on. You can use it to conduct experiments and monitor various outcomes, and you can use Google Analytics to track the findings. Go to optimize.google.com and click the “Get Started” button if you don’t already have a Google Optimize account.
After you’ve completed your profile, connect it to your GA account. If you are stuck, Google offers some detailed guidelines for you to follow.
Create an experiment in Google Optimize after everything is set up by going to the “Experiments” tab and selecting “Create Experiment”:
Add your variables, set your particular goals, and then let the experiment run. When the experiment is finished, go to the experiment’s website and select the “Reporting” option to keep track of your findings. If you wish to test other variations, repeat the procedure.
To be clear, you’re not limited to using Google Optimize. You can also utilize data from Google Analytics and even Facebook Analytics to get a full picture of how your secondary objectives are doing.
A/B Testing Secondary Goals: Frequently Asked Questions
Because A/B testing may be intimidating, here’s a short rundown of the key topics I’ve discussed to emphasize the importance of secondary objectives in your A/B testing approach.
What is A/B testing, and how does it work?
A/B testing, often known as split testing, enables marketers to compare the performance of two variations of the same variable, such as paid advertisements or website components. The aim is to test both versions at the same time to determine which has the most effect.
In A/B testing, what is the difference between main and secondary goals?
The main objectives of A/B testing are related to the performance of each variable. To put it another way, main objectives enable you to monitor how changing a variable affects visitor behavior.
Secondary objectives, often known as metrics, provide you with additional information about how your visitors behave while on your site. Secondary objectives are important since they help you enhance your site’s overall user experience, which will boost conversions in the long term.
For A/B testing, which secondary objectives should you keep track of?
Depending on your specific aims, you should monitor supplementary objectives. Newsletter signups, add-to-cart activities, and interactions with other site or page features are all indicators you should pay attention to. Depending on your main objective, you may also want to keep track of conversion rates.
In A/B testing, how do you evaluate secondary goals?
To begin, assess existing performance to establish a baseline against which to compare future results. Then, to measure each objective, utilize analytics tools like Google Optimize. Compile your findings and develop a plan based on them.
Conclusions are secondary goals.
Don’t restrict yourself to monitoring main objectives and data while doing A/B testing. Instead, make sure you’re tracking those essential secondary objectives to see how well your website is doing and if the customer experience is satisfactory.
What’s the greatest part? Secondary measures may be measured without a slew of complex instruments. To get a more complete view of your performance, just monitor your analytics data in GA or use one or two additional measurement tools.
Are you keeping track of your A/B secondary objectives? Which measurement instrument do you think is the most useful?
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