If you’re planning to sell products and services to today’s fast-moving global consumers, there’s no way around it—you need a website. And to make sure that website delivers an experience that fuels conversions and revenue, testing and optimization are crucial.
There are lots of different ways to test your website. However, while some tests will help you optimize, others will just take up your time and give nothing useful back in return.
This guide will show you how to build and run the right kind of website test and decode the results to get the answers you need.
The Nuts and Bolts of Website Testing
As you dive into the complex world of website testing, it’s important to lay some groundwork. The content that’s served to a visitor is called an experience, and every experience can be broken down into a collection of elements.
To explain this in further detail, take the typical landing page as an example. Imagine your landing page includes a top navigation menu, a free shipping message, and a large rotating banner above the fold. Each of those are individual elements that, when combined, make up an experience. Performance testing allows you to compare the effectiveness of multiple elements, as well as the overall experience. This is beneficial for iterative development and ongoing site optimization, as well as brand new experiences and overhauling entire sites.