Throughout my time as a marketer and blogger I’ve come to learn that a lot of site owners are missing out on a huge opportunity.
Have you ever seen one of those blog posts that go on about “How I earned $40,000 in a month from my blog” or “How I improved conversions on my squeeze page by 78%”?
So how do they do it?
They use a combination of split testing and multivariate testing to show them what elements of their site is converting and which aren’t.
What does this all mean?
Split testing is a straight forward A/B type test which just compares one version to another while multivariate testing is just a slightly more complex test that takes into account more variables.
The fact is that there is a huge opportunity; the door is being left wide open because so many site owners and in fact large companies are not making the most of testing.
A study by Econsultancy.com showed that currently for every $92 spent acquiring visitors, only $1 is spent converting them.
Why test at all?
Whether you want more email subscribers or to sell more products, testing will help you get there; it will help you sort out what works from what doesn’t work.
How can you start testing right now?
It’s easy than you may think, and now I’m going to show you a number of WordPress plugins that you can start using to dramatically improve your websites conversions. Don’t worry; the plugins that are included in this article are all freely available from the WordPress plugin repository.
Best Split Testing Plugins for WordPress
1. Title Split Testing for WordPress
This is a really straight forward and easy to use plugin that focuses on optimizing just one aspect of your site; titles.
This may not seem much, but believe me titles are important because if people aren’t enticed into viewing your articles to start off with then you will struggle from the get go.
Just altering the wording of titles can make a huge difference; take a look around some of your favorite blogs and just look at how the titles are worded.
Some will just jump out at you and compel you to read them, others won’t.
While part of it comes down to what the article is actually about you will find some that despite being about something you thought you had no interest in you’re just drawn to click and read the article.
This can be a powerful tool for increasing your average time on site and reducing your bounce rate which are both factors that will improve the user experience on your site and are also factored into Google’s ranking algorithm.
Download the plugin (not available any more)
2. SES Theme Split Test
There will come a time when you try to decide between two or more different WordPress themes and you can’t make a decision.
This plugin allows you to leave the decision up to your websites visitors by giving you the ability to test between multiple WordPress themes.
You may want to use completely different themes, or you may want to use several different versions of a single theme – either way this plugin makes it easy for you.
Another powerful feature of this plugin is that you’re able to track your testing through Google analytics which means no going backwards and forwards between your site and Google analytics.
3. Max A/B
Max A/B allows you to get started right away with an original (or control) page and then 3 variations followed by your conversion page.
Your conversion page will be the page that the visitor of your site reaches to complete the end goal of the pages that you’re optimizing.
So if you’re optimizing a squeeze page then your conversion page will most likely be the thank you page that the visitor is forwarded to after adding their email address and pressing submit.
You can create unlimited experiments but the only real drawback here is that this is only compatible with pages and not posts. Although generally speaking it’s most likely going to be a page that you would want to optimize, for example; a landing page, squeeze page or sales page.
4. Google Content Experiments
The goal of this plugin is simple; to help those without coding experience setup Google content experiments on their own website easily.
You may have heard of this under a different name; Google originally provided a service called the website optimizer but this was discontinued on 1st August 2012 and rolled into Google analytics.
Plugins really don’t get any more simpler than this, once you’re all setup in Google content experiments you can just install and activate this plugin, then go to the post or page screen within WordPress, tick a box to activate and paste in your code, click update and you’re ready to rock and roll.
If split testing won’t do the job for you and you need to incorporate some multivariate testing then there is a method that you can use alongside Google content experiments but it takes some planning and organisation to work for you.
5. WP Test Monkey
This plugin is a “working out of the box” solution for testing various elements in any post or page within your WordPress website.
You can test headlines, prices, call to action or various elements within the copy.
There are some drawbacks here as with the free version you can only run 1 test at a time and test 2 elements in each test but despite that it’s very easy to use and there are no complicated systems involved here.
Just activate the plugin, select which pages you want to test, add your variations and let it rip.
Summary
After reading this post you will now know exactly what tools you can start using to start improving conversions and which will help make a big difference to the income you’re receiving from your website.
There isn’t a one glove fits all solution available for free in the WordPress plugin repository yet but the plugins mentioned above come very close!
You may also want to see our in-depth comparison of top 10 landing page plugins for WordPress.
Have you had any experience with split testing or multivariate testing in the past? If so I would love to hear about it in the comments below.
Split test is important and should be done all the time.
Glad to see you here, Faisal. Thanks for stopping by :).
Agree Fas
it is good, keep sharing
This site has a lot of great information on it. I already use Google analytic s and a couple of other tools to help track. This is interesting though. Think I will bookmark you for easy reference. Thanks
That’s awesome to hear, Jimmie. Thanks for the nice comment :).
I’m using the max a/b split tester at the moment but yet to see the results and how it works…..didn’t know there were so many other options out there…will take a look at the content experiments plugin too.
I’ve used max a/b but and it worked very well but i did not really like having to make new pages for each variation. I been using AB Press Optimizer and like it so far. http://abpressoptimizer.com/
Thank you for mentioning my plugin 🙂
Thanks for the info.
Any suggestion for premium A/B testing plugins?
Hi Luca,
It depends what your end goal is and what exactly that you’re looking to split test.
One of the best would probably be Optimizely.com, although it’s a monthly payment type thing. The plugin is free to download.
They do a free test so you can try it out though which may be worth while you checking out.
This is interesting information here and i have been looking to learn more about how to run split tests. Can you also run split tests on blog posts or is it specific to a page?
Any info would be great.
Thanks,
David
David,
You should be able to split test any element on your blog, the only limitation would be of the system that you’re using to do the split test.
The truth is that most people just don’t do it on blog posts and save it for landing pages, sales pages or other blog elements that involve a call to action.
Hello, very informative, I’ve checked out some of these plugins and some almost get me there. I have a one product WP website that I want to do some split testing primarily with pricing. So I’ll have different price options on the “deal” landing page. But what happens when someone leaves that page (though I know optimally I want them to always stay) – and they go maybe read our About page or FAQ page – do these plugins typically recognize the user’s session so that they can click back to the Deal page and be served the same variant they saw a minute prior?
Hi Joe,
Some of these plugins just wouldn’t be suitable in your situation but Google Content Experiments should work for you and display the same variation to your visitors when they go back to the deal page.
Hey Great post!
We also have a free A/B testing tool for landing pages
http://wordpress.org/plugins/landing-pages/
Great selection but I’m having difficulty in finding one that will allow me to test everything under one place. I want to be able to test the widget area, the theme ,page layouts. color variations and calls to action. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions.
I’ve been on the look out for something that does this myself – no luck yet. If you find one that does it before me, let me know 🙂
Hi Adam,
Now, Nelio A/B Testing has released version 3.3 (http://wp-abtesting.com/) which includes A/B tests of:
– headlines (title, excerpt, and feature image testing) and,
– widgets
http://wp-abtesting.com/nelio-ab-testing-3-3-for-publishers-and-bloggers/.
It’s the first tool for WordPress that will let you define alternative widget sets in your WordPress and test them.