What is Split Testing Anyways?

Many people who are advertising their goods and services on the internet may not know what split testing is and how it can be used to improve marketing campaigns. And that’s what split testing fundamentally is – a marketing campaign tool. When used effectively a company can improve and direct a wide range of marketing strategies more effectively. Split testing can give companies a clearer understanding of what visitors and subscribers react to, therefore allowing them to optimize those strategies.

Split testing helps take the guess work out of marketing campaign decisions because it gathers information and presents the facts of what campaign headline, broadcast message, or opt-in form works best. Split testing is a controlled experiment that compares two or more strategies side by side. There are several different Split Testing strategies, the most common of which is A/B Split Testing.

A/B Split Testing

The most common use of A/B Split Testing is applied to the testing of two distinct headlines on a page. What’s decided in this test is which headline out performs the other and this is accomplished by evaluating the number of hits or responses that each headline receives. However, there is much more information that can be cultivated from A/B testing.

A/B Split Testing can also give companies information about visitor behaviors, along with their priorities, as each one visits your website. As a diagnostic tool the user is more able to identify specific problems and solve them. Not only can A/B Split Testing be used diagnostically, but it helps a company also design and write more effective web pages to attract more visitors. A key point however, is that in order to determine the effectiveness of a particular web page A/B Split Testing will have to be performed repeatedly, one test will not provide enough information for a company to make quality decisions.

There are some things to remember regarding A/B Split Testing. Here is a short list of a few of them.

Companies can create sequential A/B split tests even without an actual A/B split test. This is done by showing one web page for a certain period of time and then showing the next version after, but for that same period of time as the previous. All a company needs to do is compare the number of hits on each of the two web pages to determine which page is more effective.



A/B split testing is a tool to provide executives and management hard evidence to support any suggested improvements or changes to the web site. This is invaluable information for middle management teams.

Consistent use of A/B split testing will significantly increase the knowledge of a company’s web design group.

Other Types of Split Testing

Multi-Level Split Testing can motivate visitors by testing the most significant elements of a website.

Variable Rate Split Testing reduces exposure to creatives that perform poorly, therefore minimizing harm from any bad test creatives.

Direct Response Element Testing allows companies to optimize content that appears on multiple pages of their site.

Multivariate/Taguchi Testing & Analysis allows companies to multiple split tests all at the same and can increase sales responses by 300% to 500%.