5 Powerful WordPress Split Testing Plugins

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.

Download the plugin

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.

Download the plugin

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 1^st 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.

Download the plugin

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.

Download the plugin

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.