A/B Testing for Dropshipping and eCommerce Businesses

A/B testing is a method of trying two different process workflows with customers to understand the feasibility and efficiency of both methods. This helps us find which one is relevant, and that ultimately improves conversions and revenue.

Think about it: you have two amazing marketing ideas and which one will you prefer? With analysis and previous data evaluation, you believe both strategies would work wonders. How do you decide? The correct method to decide that is through A/B testing. Let’s explore more about A/B testing.

Understanding A/B Testing

A/B testing is the process of assessing two workflows and methods to understand customers’ reactions, conversions, revenue, and other KPIs associated with these workflows.

This method helps us optimize our traffic, increase engagement on landing pages, and improve the way customers integrate with our social media accounts. As a result, we are able to improve our return on investment.

Benefits of A/B Testing

Throughout this discussion, we have already figured out that A/B testing helps you improve conversions and revenue. Let’s find out how:

Even when we have data to analyze the success of different elements, we tend to rely on instinct. A/B testing helps you receive concrete data on methods that work and ones that don’t.

Based on the results of A/B testing, you can implement valuable changes to your dropshipping business based on the A/B testing, such as changing your home page.

A/B testing has the potential to reduce marketing and redesign risks.When we market a product or redesign our dropshipping store, we run the chance of losing traffic due to the impact of the design. Using A/B testing will help us gauge results. In place of testing the entire element at once in front of the entire audience, we can check the results with a small audience and make incremental improvements.

Why Consider A/B Testing

As a dropshipping business, you have various decisions to make. For example,

• Listing of dropshipping products
• Website layout
• SEO optimization
• Marketing campaigns
• Offering customer support

A/B testing helps you improve the experience of these activities by allowing you to assess conversions, click-through rate, revenue, complaint structure, loyalty, etc.

These key indicators help you know the happiness quotient of your customers. From the two methods that you are using, you can understand what makes your customers happy. Finding this helps you reach a larger audience and make a bigger impact.

Think about it: every industry giant uses A/B testing to understand the impact on customers. For example, Amazon introduced amazing features like one-day shipping, one-click shopping, etc. with advanced testing. They did not come up with the idea overnight. The e-commerce provider used A/B testing and different possibilities to reach these valuable features.

How A/B Testing Is Executed

To execute A/B testing, we need to first decide the following factors:

• Which are feature you differentiating?
• How are the CTA, heading, image, copy, video, etc. placed?
• What is the language of the content used?
• Who are we targeting?

With the help of the above factors, we can divide our audience into two major groups. For example, you have decided to create a pink and a blue ad, and based on this, your audience will be divided into pink and blue groups.

While we understand that there are two audience groups, it is imperative to create these versions. This includes,

• Selecting the size of each audiences
• The statistical analysis of both groups
• Demographics and functional differences in the audience

To begin A/B testing, experts suggest keeping control in mind. This control can be a base version of your campaign or element, which we will modify according to A and B audience groups. For example, you are running an email campaign to redirect your audience to a product launch page.

Now, we can create a control launch page for benchmarking our results. Using this launch page, we will create two pages and test them with a real audience. The page with the best results and key markers will become the champion. The champion page can then be used for the actual audience.

However, one important factor to keep in mind is that you need to run both tests at the same time. In many situations, time is the prime factor. If you are selling Christmas accessories but running both A and B campaigns at different times, you may experience some important variations because of the timing of the campaign.

Where You Can Use A/B Testing

One of the major goals of A/B testing is to eliminate pain points, offer better service, and remove friction from the dropshipping shopping cycle. This is to say that A/B testing is often used to improve conversions and traffic on our dropshipping store.

Where can you use A/B testing?

• Compare how one product is purchased and viewed by different user groups
• Understand the expected quality of products and services
• Assess the billing method preferred by a group of users
• Evaluate the suitable shipping, delivery time, and method
• Know which social media campaign is more acceptable
• Understand the preferred layout for the landing page
• Know the effectiveness of product pictures

There are several other factors that we can assess with the help of A/B testing, such as how quickly we can convert a customer with a CTA, what category of products sell more, etc.

Examples of A/B Testing in Dropshipping

Here are some examples of A/B testing in dropshipping to help you understand the process and its impact:

• On your website, you can use A/B testing to determine the efficiency of navigation. Create two user-friendly layouts and check which one helps your users.
• The layout of how you are placing and viewing products on the dropshipping store can be tested with the help of A/B testing.
• If you are introducing a new product category on your website, you can check which category is well-received by customers.
• We create a contact form on the dropshipping store, and this method can help us know which format can help us receive better results.
• Similarly, on social media, marketers often test campaigns with A/B testing. You can test your Facebook ads on small audiences to see which type of ad campaign would reveal the best results for your business.
• If you are trying to divert users to a landing page, you can check the efficiency of the A and B types of landing pages.
• Lastly, you can see if a tool is making a difference in your supply chain model. Cater to one set of users with the tool and another without it. See the differences and assess the efficiency of using this tool.

Conclusion

Dropshipping businesses rely on marketing, website design, and online publicity of their store. Using A/B testing in these use cases only helps you make better-driven decisions that are backed by data. You can know which method, website layout, marketing campaign, or landing page will help you improve conversions. Based on this, you can plan your entire business, improve conversions and earn more revenue.

However, remember to plan for A/B testing in the right way. You should really evaluate small details like the demographics of your audience and the preferences of your current customers. If you properly research, you would be able to receive better benefits from this method.