Optimization Guide Step 2: A/B Testing
A/B testing refers to the procedure where you test two elements against each other to determine the winner. Those elements are offers and landers. And the winner for each element will be the one that performs the best in terms of Profit or ROI.
To be able to test them, you need to have more than one offer and/or lander. How many of them you should get? With enough traffic volume, as much as possible. But realistically, anything between 2 and 5 is OK.
The goal right now is to find a good offer among the ones that you already have and then use it to find a good lander.
I. A/B Test Offers
Start with finding a good offer, because an offer is closer to your main goal: getting a high profit. When testing a lander, you need to match it with a proven offer to know that if no or little conversions occur, it is a lander's fault, not offer's. The whole point of a lander is to boost your profits, not to achieve the highest CTR.
A good offer is the one that will bring you at least a couple of conversions first with a reasonably high CR.
Add multiple offers
To test the performance of offers, perform the following steps:
- Add offers that you want to test to Voluum.
- Create or edit an existing campaign, with all the required information provided and a traffic source you have added.
- In the Offers section, click the Add Offer button to add more than one offer.
- Select offers that you want to test from the drop-down menus.
-
Click the Save button.
Traffic will be equally distributed to all three offers.
Check for offers' performance
After some time you will be able to assess the performance of each offer. To check for the performance of the offers in this campaign, perform the following steps:
- Click your campaign and then click the Report button.
- Go to the Offers category.
- Check the stats for your offer and determine the winner.
Use either Profit or ROI as your performance indicators.
Change traffic volume:
Once you have determined the winner, direct most of the traffic towards this offer, and use the remaining traffic to test other offers. Traffic volume is governed by offers or landers weights that can be adjusted in a campaign edit form.
Edit your campaign and delete the non-profitable offers. Add the new offer to test. Change the winning offer's weight too 400 and the new offer's weight to 100 to direct 4 times more traffic to the performing offer.
Tip
Discover new feature: If you don't want to manually adjust weights of offers or other elements, you can use the Traffic Distribution AI feature. It incorporates machine learning to drive more traffic to the more profitable elements without any manual tinkering.
Back to top
II. A/B Test Landers
Once you have found the winning offer, use it to find a winning lander. Prepare at least two landing pages that differ greatly in their design to get a better insight into what works.
Add multiple landers
In order to split test landers, perform the following steps:
- Add landing pages that you want to test as lander elements to Voluum.
- Edit your campaign.
- Click the Add lander button to add more than one lander.
- Select landers that you want to test from the drop-down menus.
-
Click the Save button
Check for landers' performance:
Once you gather some data, check the performance of your landers in the same way as you have checked the performance of the offers. In order to do so, perform the following steps:
- Click your campaign and then click the Report button.
- Go to the Landers category.
- Check stats for your lander and determine the winner.
Change traffic volume:
Right now you have a working lander-offer pair. Direct most of the traffic to this pair by changing weights value, but always use the remaining part of traffic to test new elements.
Back to top
The Yardstick
Once you have a lander and an offer of proven quality, you can use them as yardsticks to test new elements:
- When testing new offer, test it with a proven lander so when no conversions occur, you will know that this offer is bad.
- When testing a new lander, test it with a proven offer so when no conversions occur, you will know that this lander is bad.
Back to top
The 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule states that you should use the majority of your traffic to generate profits, but reserve a small portion of your traffic to keep testing new offers and landers. Offers may not generate profits indefinitely, some conditions may change and you may lose the source of your income. You have to be ready for that and have a backup offer already tested. Or have two profitable offers running to earn more money. Either way, the market is changing constantly, new opportunities arise and old opportunities fade away.
On the other hand remember not to test everything at once, because isolating variables and finding out what works will be more difficult.
Back to top
Click the image on the right to go to the next step: |
Track & optimize
your campaigns with ease!