For many people without a great deal of experience in online marketing, decisions about landing pages are made primarily on gut instinct, what experience has taught them and personal opinion.

All of this can go a long way with someone who has a lot of experience. But even in that case – and certainly if you are not that experienced – there is a much better way: A/B testing.

While A/B testing can be time consuming and requires consistency, it’s the smart move because it puts the decision on how to design your landing pages in the hands of your customers, which is exactly where it needs to be.

The Importance of Testing Landing Pages

Even veteran internet marketers and page designers can fall into the trap of deciding what is best for their customers, rather than letting the customer guide them through the results of testing.

Why do this? Here are some examples culled from marketing experts.

Words matter. With A/B testing, you can find that just changing a few words on your landing page can lead to better results. In an example reported on Wordstream, changing an ad from “Get $10 Off the First Purchase. Book Online Now!” to simply “Get an additional $10 off. Book online now” resulted in doubling the click through rate.

Design matters. Where you should you place the call-to-action button on your landing page? What color should it be? How about size? While you can guess or use your own preferences, simply testing the site with different variations can show how big improvements can be made.

Number of pages matter. The conventional thinking might be that the less steps a person has to take to complete a form on a landing page, the better. But this is not always the case. In that same Wordstream article, one internet marketer reported that he had a landing page where the product and the “add to cart” options were on one page. It was then changed to one page where the product was featured, but required a second click for the “add to cart” options. And the extra step version did better, with an 18% higher conversion rate.

It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect

There is a great saying that if are a gazelle in a herd being chased by lions, you don’t have to be the fastest gazelle. You just have to be faster than the slowest gazelle.

That same attitude should be taken into A/B testing. You don’t have to make your site the highest converting site in the history of internet marketing. You just have to do better than you are doing right now.

The only real competition is yourself and A/B testing can help you improve. Here are some places to consider focusing your testing.

  • Main headline
  • The call to action
  • Main photo
  • Copy length
  • Button color
  • Button size
  • Button placement

Keeping these issues in mind, it’s easy to see the benefits of A/B testing. Make the time to experiment with your site’s design and content, and you will reap the benefits of your efforts.