A/B Testing Landing Pages Guide

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Optimizing a landing page is a lot of work. You define an audience, fine-tune the copy,  refine the UX design…then are left with lackluster conversion rates. Why? 

For as much effort as you put into your landing page, there’s always room for improvement. Maybe you need to play around with the CTA placement, or leverage social proof by showcasing customer reviews. 

The best way to figure out how to improve your landing page is to see how certain changes impact user behavior – which is where A/B testing comes in. Conducting A/B tests on your landing pages will provide you with clear data on what resonates with your users, and inspires them to take action. 

Here's our guide to conducting A/B tests in 2023. 

Why you should A/B test your landing pages

It’s only natural that the first (or second or third) version of a landing page will require some level of tweaking. Even with the most thoughtful UX design and copy, no one can ever know exactly how users will navigate your landing pages. 

With A/B testing, you’re able to isolate how certain aspects of your landing page impact user behavior. These experiments allow you to collect data on how design or copy influences decision-making, which helps companies create an even better user experience. On the flip side, testing allows you to concretely define what isn’t working, and what should be removed from your landing pages (helping to establish best practices). 

What to test on your landing pages

A landing page consists of several components that ideally all work together to get a customer to convert (whether that’s filling out a demo request, completing a purchase, etc.). Below we’ve listed a few ideas of what to test. 

Page layout

How you design your landing page will impact the user experience (and your performance). How are you organizing information? Are you making it easy for users to take action without coming on too strong? These are just a couple questions to consider when designing and optimizing a landing page. 

As a general rule, avoiding “clutter” or too much information is a good way to go. You don’t want to overwhelm or bore users that land on your page – you want to quickly (and smoothly) explain the problem you solve for customers, why your company is better than the competition, and how users can get started. You also don’t want to hide the call to action (everything from button color to CTA sizing can impact conversion rates). 

If you notice the bounce rate on your landing page is too high, you can use heatmaps to understand what’s grabbing (or losing) people’s attention, and craft an A/B test from there. 

CTA or other offers

Your call-to-action needs to be visible and tied to an enticing value proposition. This offer or discount should be easily visible; your audience shouldn’t have to search for a way to convert.  

We recommend A/B testing different versions of your CTA to see which is the most effective. Here are some ideas of what to test when it comes to your CTA: 

• The wording (ex: Book a Demo vs. Contact Us)

• The button color and/or size 

• Where it’s placed on the landing page 

Images or videos

Images and/or videos can help make your landing page more appealing, helping potential customers to see your products in action. But there are a few things to keep in mind when including a visual asset like this: does the video take too long to load? Is it informative enough, and up to date?

You can run an A/B test on where images and videos are placed, or swap in different visuals (or varying video lengths) to see if this impacts user behavior. 

Copy and product descriptions

Your copy is your digital salesperson. Ultimately, it’s the element in your landing page tasked with engaging and convincing users to take a desired action. If your copy is too long and doesn’t pique your audience’s interest immediately, that will influence conversions. Alternatively, if your product descriptions don’t provide enough information about why someone needs that product, they won’t fill out a contact form or book a demo. 

Test your page with versions of different headlines, subheaders, or product descriptions. Experiment with the placement of the copy as well—it might be more effective after you display customer testimonials or next to a small video of the product.

How to run A/B tests on your landing pages

An A/B test is when you create two different versions of your landing page, in which only one element has been changed. Then, you split web traffic between two audience segments (with one receiving version A, and the other, version B). By analyzing user behavior between these two pages, you can then see how this single page element influences performance. 

Choose what you want to test

Every experiment begins with a hypothesis, and an A/B test is no different. The first step is to consider what you want to test (e.g., if I change the CTA button size, more people will convert…). 

To pick a good starting point, first consult the customer data you already collected. For instance, if you see on a heatmap that most users aren’t scrolling to the bottom of your landing page, you may want to experiment with the page layout. 

You can also look at past landing pages you created that successfully drove conversions. Compare them with the current page and determine what sets them apart to pinpoint an element that could be optimized.

Choose an A/B testing tool

There are several great tools to help set up and implement an A/B test (along with tracking the results). Many of these tools also allow you to edit pages directly in their platform with a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor, meaning technical support can be kept to a minimum. (You’ll also have the ability to include additional CSS or HTML if you need extra coding beyond what the WYSIWYG editor offers.)

A few tools that businesses employ for A/B testing include:

• Hubspot

• Google Optimize

• Optimizely

Determine the differences between variations

After you set up your A/B test and let it run —usually around two to three weeks to determine statistical significance—it’s time to look at the differences between variations. Did one version have a higher conversion rate than the other? Was performance between the two pretty much the same? This analysis will help you decide whether it’s worth it to roll out a new version of your landing page (and help determine what to test next). 

Based on the results, implement changes and continue to iterate

If your variant page performs better than the original page, then implement those changes and tweak your landing pages accordingly. Continuously fine-tune your page and test more landing page elements until you get to the most optimized version possible of your landing page.

How Twilio Segment can help you with landing page A/B tests

To create a successful landing page that converts, you need insights into your target audience. A customer data platform (CDP) like Twilio Segment collects and unlocks that valuable information for you.  

With Twilio Segment, you can create audience segments based on behavior, demographics, interactions with your brand across channels, and more. You can then send this data to your A/B testing platform and use those segments to build more granular, personalized landing page experiments.