"Would this button colour work better?" "If I reword this, will I get more enquiries?" Running a website raises endless questions like these. But if you decide based on gut feeling or personal taste, there's no way to know whether it actually drives sales. That's exactly where A/B testing comes in.
What Is A/B Testing?
A/B testing means showing two versions (A and B) to real visitors and comparing which one performs better. For example, you might show half your visitors a "Book Now" button and the other half a "Get a Free Consultation" button, then compare the click-through rates.
What Can You Test?
- Button text and colour: "Contact Us" vs "Get a Reply in 5 Minutes"
- Hero image: food photo vs venue atmosphere photo
- How you show pricing: with or without a strikethrough original price
- Contact form length: 5 fields vs 3 fields
- Headlines and titles
Getting Started in 3 Steps
- Set one goal. Pick a single metric to measure—bookings, form submissions, or phone clicks.
- Change only one thing at a time. If you change both the button colour and text, you won't know what made the difference.
- Run it long enough. At least two weeks, longer if you have low traffic. Don't rush to conclusions from a few days of data.
A Few Cautions
If your site has very low traffic, it may be more practical to simply ask your customers directly or observe behaviour with a heatmap instead of running an A/B test. With too little data, the results are hard to trust. Google Optimize has shut down, but plenty of other tools now let you run simple tests.
Sometimes a small change makes a noticeable difference to your enquiry rate. At PICKTECH, we improve websites based on real data and help you decide which elements are worth testing.