Is there a limit to split-testing?

No doubt you’ve had success with split-testing. Perhaps now you’re wondering what else you can split-test? The good news is, pretty much anything! But there are some caveats…

There are a wide range of items you can split-test, but for reliable results, each time you split-test you should only change one thing. Otherwise you’ll never really know which change made a difference. For example, let’s say you’re split-testing your landing page.

You want to increase the amount of people that fill in a form. Here’s some of the things you can change on the page:

• Your hero image
• The wording of the button that submits the form
• The order of the blocks on the page
• The position of the form
• The number of fields the prospect needs to fill in
• And more!

However, you can only test one of these things at a time. That doesn’t mean you can’t test them all. It just means that you find the winning outcome for each consideration, then work that winner into the next test. This way you end up with the most optimized outcome possible.

Just because you can only test one variable at a time, however, doesn’t mean you can’t test multiple versions at once. For instance, you can test out as many hero images as you want in a test. Just make sure the variable is in the same category. This is why we don’t tend to say A/B testing at Dotdigital. We’re multi-taskers. And A/B/C/D/etc. testing takes too long to say or write. So, back to our original question, what can you split-test? For your marketing and engagement campaigns, you might consider split-testing:

• Tone of the message
• From-name
• Content, such as imagery or headers
• Order of content
• Subject line
• Call-to-action text
• Call-to-action button size or position
• Pre-header text

Or even…

• Use of emojis

That last one might not seem like a big deal, but consumer credit reporter Experian found that using emojis in their subject lines increased open rates by an amazing 56%. These are the kind of results you can start to see when you start experimenting with split-testing!

Of course, all of these variables can be split-tested with ease within Dotdigital. See for yourself in your account, set up a demo if you don’t already have one or download our ebook today to learn more about the how small changes can amount to big results when you start split-testing.