How to A/B Test your Landing Page? The Complete Expert Guide (2024)

We discuss A/B testing for your SaaS landing page with insights and suggestions from copywriting experts and SaaS founders.

How to A/B Test your Landing Page? The Complete Expert Guide (2024)
Are you looking to run an A/B test on your landing page? Read this entire guide before you start testing!
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Note: SaaSwrites is a curated growth marketing hub and resource built to help SaaS founders grow their products. We sincerely thank all our experts for their constant value addition to this world.

Why is the A/B test on your landing page important?

A/B testing is a process of testing two different versions of a landing page to see which one performs better. This is a great way to fine-tune your landing page and ensure that it's optimized for conversion through data instead of guesswork.~Ygor Durães
You just ran an A/B test on a landing page, what's next?
  • Make sure you understand the company goals and how this page helps support those goals. Does it drive awareness? leads? customers/purchases? You can't make an impact if you don't know where you need to go.
  • The data you need to create your tests in places like GA and Hotjar, but you also need to get it from other qualitative sources - like the sales team and support tickets.
Make sure you have the quant and qual data you need.
  • Understand traffic quality coming to the page and how it aligns with your ICP. Some customers are more valuable than others and a test may not actually win if it's driving customers who churn quickly.
  • Start planning your next A/B test. Understand that every test can't be a winner, but every test can teach you something (even the losing versions).
Even after rewriting your landing page copy and improving it 10x, you should still A/B test it. The gut feeling is silver. Data is gold. ~ Yannick
Before you A/B test your landing page, you need to focus on one thing and one thing only CTR. Click-through rate is the magical number that will get you to do everything right with your ad strategy, be it audience targeting, video first creative, enticing copy, or much more.
A landing page AB test is not just for boosting sales, it is also for learning. If you know the intent of your prospective buyers, you can create experiences that predict their behaviors. You shouldn't stop testing landing pages.~Everzocial

How to A/B Test your Landing Page

A 5% increase in customer retention increases profits by up to 95%.
I just finished up an A/B test that increased our retention by 11%.
Here's how I did it:
To start this A/B test, I had to answer 4 questions:
  • What's the goal?
  • Where are we testing?
  • What are we going to test?
  • What's the hypothesis for our test?

What's the goal?

Our goal was simple.
Increase the month 2 retention rate of our top-selling kit.
Not ALL products.
We got laser-focused on ONE kit.

Where are we testing?

We chose to run the test in our email onboarding series.
Email is one of the best channels to communicate with your customers.
We wanted to nail the customer experience from purchase to first subscription renewal.

What are we going to test?

We decided to test email content in the first 30 days post-purchase.
Path A: Personalized kit breakdown
Path B: Lifestyle / educational emails

What's the hypothesis for our test?

Our hypothesis was...
If we go ALL-OUT on a personalized kit breakdown:
  1. The customer will get more value out of their products
  1. They will see better results and want to stick around for month 2.
Content planning: With our goal and test idea in place, we were ready to start building.
Our next step was to develop the content roadmap for each path.
Path A: Personalized Kit Breakdown
14 educational emails over 30 days tailored specifically to the kit they just purchased.
Email #1:
  • Welcome + high-level overview of what's in their kit.
Emails #2-8:
  • Detailed breakdown of each product.
  • Sent every day for 7 days.
  • What the product does
  • How to use the product
Emails #9-14:
  • 1 email sent every 4 days
  • Address common struggles
  • Education on routine
  • Lifestyle-focused
  • Answer FAQs
Path B: Lifestyle / educational emails
This path was essentially the same content as Emails #9-14 in Path A.
1 email is sent every 6 days.
All evergreen educational content that could apply to most of our products.
i.e. Useful, but not personalized.
The Results: Path A (Personalized Kit Breakdown) had an 11.82% uplift in month 2 retention rate.
It took about 3 weeks to plan, write, design, and build the email flow.
It took another 2 months to collect the test results.
Takeaways: My guess is most companies aren't putting that much time and effort into their email onboarding series. Especially for just one product.
Bonus: We now have a playbook we can run on all of our other most popular kits.
It's sparking new test ideas for:
  • Month 2 & 3 education
  • Upsell/Cross-Sell
  • SMS onboarding
And we can continue optimizing this original flow over time.
Things you can A/B test:
  • Landing page
  • Creatives
  • Funnel
  • Copy
  • Offer
What else? All these things are within your control. If you want to improve your results, improve these elements.~ Mark William
  • Test Your Headline
  • Test Your CTA
  • Test Images vs. Video
  • Test Your Form Fields
  • Test Your Layout

Don't A/B test everything
I personally know a lot of founders and marketers who're obsessed with A/B testing every element of the landing page.
Define your metrics and test only essential components of the landing page (Pricing/ Headline/ Video/Image etc).
Nailing our landing page really helped us drop our CPA.
But you should never stop there. Keep testing.
  • Test new styles of LPs (listicles, quizzes)
  • Keep AB testing variables on the page (banners, CTA buttons)
  • Keep testing offers (BOGO, % or $ OFF, Free Gifts)

A case study: How A/B testing drove 72% More Revenue from the Previous Landing Page

Quick background: We launched NoonBrew in September '21 and have sold over 50,000 packages of tea this year.
So the test we did was on this landing page that we drive all of our traffic to.
notion image
The previous version was a 30-serving subscription funnel.
When you clicked "Get Started", it drove you to a 2nd page that asked if you wanted to upgrade to a 90-serving subscription along w/ a free frother.
notion image
That bumped up our AOV as a good portion of people chose the 90-servings.
But we also lost a big % of people on that extra step.
So the test we did was put "Buy Now" product cards on the landing page.
notion image
Once you click "Buy Now" goes directly to the checkout page
This helped with a few things:
  • It reduced the friction to purchase
  • There was no drop-off since we eliminated the upgrade page
  • It increased conversion rates because people could easily purchase a one-off bag of NoonBrew
The way I tested this was:
  • Created a duplicate page in Shopify of our previous landing page.
  • Added in the new "Buy Now" product cards.
  • Did a redirect test via Google Optimize to.
notion image
Split traffic evenly (50 / 50) between the landing pages
We measured the test via revenue per session and the new landing page drove 72% more revenue per session. This simple test has transformed our business.
Three Big lessons learned:
  • Don't add friction to your buying process.
There's a reason why Apple Pay, Shop Pay, Amazon, and Buy Now convert so well. It's because they all aim to reduce the friction in checking out.
  • Constantly test your landing pages to increase revenue per session.
Google Optimize is free to use and very easy to run tests. Don't be afraid to run big tests.
  • Regularly review Google Analytics & Microsoft Clarity.
This helps show where people are clicking, scrolling, and falling off in your funnel
Copy matters - In a recent A/B/C landing page conversion test, one page performed 40% worse than the others. Why - The only thing that was different was the headline copy. Conclusion : Words, matter. ~ Natalie Furness

What are some of the tools to do an A/B test on your landing page?

If you want to test a lot of changes on a page, a completely different design, or landing page concept, using a URL redirect test is more appropriate than a standard A/B test.
In Google Optimize, this is known as redirect tests.
notion image
 

Know that A/B testing your landing page will not always bring great results!

Always. Be. Testing.
I thought I had a great idea for my landing page, so I set up an A/B test w Google Optimize comparing the original to new idea.
Turns out, not so much. The conversions were 3X WORSE.
The people have spoken.
notion image
 
Just waiting for someone to ask!
Variant:
  • Uses sub-headline "Marketing Makers" in addition to "Growth Marketers", trying to get the attention of no-code marketers.
  • An emphasis on "free"
  • A more traditional "Subscribe Now" call-to-action button.
Original outperformed by 3X.
notion image
 
 
 
 

It’s important to have a good decent volume on your landing page to see a difference on your A/B testing results

A/B testing (aka split-testing) with low data will lead to inconclusive and even misleading results.
The same time used to optimize and market your Landing Page is more effective until your traffic increases.
Don't A/B test your landing page unless you get a high amount of regular traffic.
Less traffic may lead to an incorrect result. Instead, optimize your landing page.

Conclusion: A/B testing your landing page is great when you have your goals in mind and follow best practices

  • A/B testing can help you with understanding your niche, your audience, your market. It also helps you see how your copy and design elements convert better.
  • Know your goals with A/B testing your landing page. Test on the most important elements like headlines, images, videos, CTAs, and body copy. Do not do A/B test with different landing pages
  • Your A/B test on a landing page will become successful when you have a good volume of traffic. Ensure you have a bigger data set to make sense of your results and perform the changes. A 3% variance in an A/B test is a good metric to make changes

Written by

Qayyum Rajan
Qayyum Rajan

Qayyum (”Q”) is a serial builder with more than 5 startups to his name with 3 exits. He specializes in shipping products fast, and early with an focus on driving traffic across the marketing funnels