A/B testing, also known as bucket testing or split testing is commonly used in marketing to compare website test samples in order to see what works best. Consider it a way to test the waters before fully launching your website. Major websites that evolved out of A/B testings include Amazon, Google, Playdom (Disney Interactive) and Zynga.
Amazon is a great example of utilizing A/B testing. Their designers make frequent changes to their site, sometimes even several times per day based upon the flow of traffic and what colors and images work the best during continuous testing.
There are a number online tools that you can use to conduct A/B testing. One of the most popular is Google’s Website Optimizer. It is a free tool that gives a webmaster the ability to use javascript commands to send traffic to two different websites. Once you get some traffic to both sites, you can analyze the results to figure out which version works better.
How Often Should You Analyze Your Website?
As often as you can!
Website traffic reports are like weather reports. They tell you what is going on and attentive Internet entrepreneurs will read their reports every day. Why do they do it – because like the weather the Internet is notoriously unstable, and always full of surprises. This is especially true if you are running a Pay-Per-Click campaign. Keywords and their prices can change within hours. The ad that was working for you so well yesterday might be costing you business today.
Remember: Numbers can drastically change overnight.
There are a lot of benefits to viewing your analysis as often as you can. Many analytics tools keep you apprised of exactly what is happening on your website every single minute of the day.
