Chances are, your website has a clearly defined objective — attracting new customers, selling a service or maybe growing your email list.
If that’s the case, it makes sense that you’d want to achieve the best results possible, right?
What if someone told you that by making a few changes to your website could increase your conversion rates .5% and in the process boost revenue by 25%? Would you be interested in learning more?
A/B testing tools provide a way to achieve these results and even better.
Although it’s certainly not a magical solution — successful AB testing requires hard work — it’s possible to experience a dramatic lift in sales and revenue by simply being open to experimentation.
Luckily, there are several AB testing tools for WordPress that can make the process relatively pain free. We’re going to share a few of those tools today.
Nelio A/B Testing
Nelio A/B Testing provides a complete A/B testing solution designed specifically for WordPress users. That means virtually everything you need to keep track of your different A/B tests and results can be found within the WordPress dashboard. If you’ve ever used any AB testing tools that required you to jump back and forth between your site and an external app, you’ll understand the appeal of this approach.
While Nelio takes a native WordPress approach, that doesn’t mean your server will bear the brunt of the load. Nelio’s servers handle all the calculations and data related to your testing.
As far as the different types of tests available, Nelio allows you to create experiments for almost any element on your website including:
- Landing pages, posts, pages and headlines
- WooCommerce products
- Menus, widgets and themes
- Heatmaps & clickmaps
- CSS elements
Because Nelio is native to WordPress, testing elements of other WordPress plugins are simple. Form plugins are of particular importance and Nelio is compatible with both Gravity Forms and Contact Form 7. Another benefit of Nelio A/B Testing is that they’ve made the data easy to understand and implementing the winning result comes down to a single-click.
Nelio A/B Testing has packages that range from $288/year for 5000 page views, all the way up to $2568/year for 200k page views, making the service affordable for a wide variety of customers.
AB Press Optimizer
AB Press Optimizer is another WordPress plugin that makes it possible to conduct a wide variety of split test. This plugin is also native to WordPress with one major difference compared to Nelio A/B Testing: calculations are performed and data is stored on your server. While this provides some advantage, such as control over your data and no page view or visitor limits, it also has the potential to increase the load on your server.
As far as features, AB Press Optimizer offers plenty of options although not as many as its competitors. You’ll be able to test posts, pages, images, content blocks, headlines and forms. Other key features of note include:
- The ability to schedule tests
- Embed you test directly into your theme with PHP functions
- Test entire pages or single elements across multiple pages
- Easy to use shortcodes
Three price points are offered from $49 for a single site license to $199 for unlimited sites. Each renewable license includes 12 months of support and updates. If you’re looking for a basic and inexpensive way to get started with AB testing, this plugin might meet your needs. Just keep in mind, you might outgrow it rather quickly.
Visual Website Optimizer
Visual Website Optimizer (VWO) is one of the better known AB Testing Tools on the market. Unlike our first two plugins, VWO uses their own servers in conjunction with an asynchronous code snippet to help you manage your testing and analysis. If you’ve ever had to wait for a script to load on one of your favorite websites, this might be cause for concern. VWO uses an asynchronous code which means your site loads parallel to the VWO code. As a failsafe, they also provide a way to configure timeout parameters which can trigger the loading of your original website.
VWO relies on an easy to use point and click editor that minimizes the need for technical knowledge. However, make no mistake, if you plan to take full advantage of all the features, VWO definitely requires a learning curve. A few features of note include:
- The ability to create A/B, Multivariate and URL split tests
- Build campaigns with an easy to use visual editor
- In-depth reporting, analysis and revenue tracking
- Heatmaps and Clickmaps
- Target specific users with specific content
Being a higher-end service, VWO is a little more expensive. Two standard plans are available: A startup plan is the most basic at $49/month (billed annually) and is good for 10,000 visitors. Next up is a business plan that can be configured to your requirements. 30,000 visitors is priced at $129/month.
Optimizely
Optimizely provides an easy to use premium platform that allows you to easily run A/B and multivariate tests. Optimizely relies on a simple code snippet that’s placed in the <head> tag of any page you want to test. That’s about as technical as you’ll need to get since experiments are created using a visual editor platform. Simply create, save and implement as desired.
Once experiments are set up, you’ll be able to create customer profiles (including the use of 3rd party data) which can then be targeted based on geography, browser, device and behavior. With experiments running, Optimizely will provide real-time analytics that allows you to make marketing decisions based on reliable data.
Additional features include:
- Custom reports that can be annotated
- API Access
- Test websites & Apps
- Integrate with Google Analytics
- Target visitors using any of 15 variables
Optimizely makes it easy to get started with their service by offering a free plan. Although the free plan lacks a lot of the features (such as change history and custom segmentation), it’s still a great way to get started. If you decide that Optimizely is the right service for you or that you want more features or pricing details, you have to give them a call.
AB Testing Tools Make it Easy To Get Started
We covered 4 popular AB testing tools in this post that range from basic to full-featured. There is something for every price point and experience level. When it comes to implementing A/B testing for your website, the barriers are low enough that there’s really no reason to avoid getting started.
If you haven’t already, trial one of the platforms covered in this post and implement a few simple experiments — it just might be the easiest money you’ve make all month.
Do you have a favorite A/B testing tool that we missed? Let us know in the comments below which one you prefer and why.