A/B Testing Online Motorcycle Assets

You can create a 5%, 10%, and often higher percentage increase in the performance of your online assets with A/B testing. Your company must have solid marketing expertise to get these noted percentages. One notable item is that you will get better marketing from riders vs. passengers.

And the percentage increase for companies historically without marketing experts can be much higher if they get experts. Importantly, A/B testing lets you know what is working and what isn’t – this way, you know what to change.

Without A/B testing, it is frustrating to guess what is and isn’t working. Also, guessing what changes to make eats up time and money. Plus, guessing will still leave you not knowing if you’ve maximized the performance of your marketing assets or not.

But A/B testing your biker website design elements, social media posts, website SEO, newsletter, and other online marketing assets lets you know. Specifically, this is because data supports the results of what works best based on facts. The benefit of data-driven decisions is explained in the MVP approach article.

What Is A/B Testing?

You can do an A/B test to compare offline and online assets with just one element changed. But for this blog article, I’m referring to A/B testing for digital marketing assets (website, social media, newsletter, etc.).

Next, with these tests, you have the current asset called the “control.” Then, there is the same asset with just one modified element called the “challenger.” This way, when you are A/B testing the elements of your website, you are testing just one. Here are some examples of “elements” on your marketing assets:

• Color or location of a button on your website.
• Navigation-link text variations can be tested. For instance, the text of a link could read “Biker Jackets” or “Motorcycle Jackets.” Which one yields the best results? A/B testing will let you know.
• An image on a page of your motorcycle site
• Changing the title of a page on your biker website.
• Here are some examples of social media ads or website calls to action (CTA), like a “Shop Now” or “Learn More” button.
• The subject line in your motorcycle company’s newsletter

A/B Testing vs. Split Testing

Often, A/B testing is referred to as split testing, but there is a difference. A/B testing tests the difference between one element on one online marketing asset and another. However, split testing refers to comparing two entirely different assets. For instance, you can test two completely different web page versions.

You should use A/B testing as often as possible. It allows you to identify the cause of something based on facts. You also need to do website audits to see how your site is currently performing. 

Setting Up A/B Tests

1. Choose which asset you want to test – Note that you will have analytics and reporting tools to help make decisions for most online motorcycle assets. And for your motorcycle website, you can also use a heat map, which shows visitors’ interaction with pages.

With these tools, you can, for instance, see product pages that have low conversion rates and where visitors are clicking or exiting your site. Because you have the data from the tools, you can prioritize which assets to use in the A/B test.

2. Set your goals – For example, your goal could be to increase your website’s conversion rate or engagement rate for social media ads. Another example is that your goal could be to get more clicks from your newsletter.

3. Create a new version – If you have your control asset, you can create your challenger version with one element changed. If you don’t have a control asset, you must create your control and challenger versions.

4. Run your A/B test – Ensure each group gets equal and randomized traffic long enough to get the per-determined metrics.

5. Evaluate the results

6. Implement the proven new strategy

7. Start your next A/B test

Granted, A/B testing your marketing assets takes time and money. But if you are not testing, you lose money every time your target audience interacts with an asset that isn’t performing well. And you are also inefficiently spending time and money creating new marketing assets that don’t perform as they could.

If you want to learn more about marketing in the biker world, we have created our online Marketing Academy blog. Additional information can be found on our biker website services pages.