9 Imaginative Approaches to AB Testing Landing Pages

After reading our Ultimate A/B Testing Guide, we thought you might want to take advantage of a few creative approaches to landing page AB testing. They go beyond basics to improve your digital marketing ROI.

There are a surprising number of AB tests smart marketers can run on their landing pages to ensure they’re getting the highest conversion rates possible. You already know you can experiment with different landing page elements for conversion rate optimization. Headlines, subheads, calls to action, and design elements can all be considered when building your testing hypotheses’ list.

Now, let’s kick it up a notch with these nine approaches for landing page AB Testing that may inspire you to create your own unique AB tests.

1. Create Targeted Landing Pages for A B Testing

Let’s say you are launching an advertising campaign. And you want to know what page will convert best: a generic one or a highly targeted to the audience and message. For this split test you could have ad variations that would use your generic landing page and one or more targeted landing page versions.

For example, if Shopify did an AB test between their generic vs. targeted landing pages in an advertising campaign, the control would apply to anyone looking for an eCommerce solution.

Shopify’s homepage with a generic target audience would be the control in this AB test.

For a variation or version of a landing page, they could use their page that targets booksellers.

This landing page addresses the ecommerce needs of a specific audience.

To maximize your conversions with this test, analyze your customer database to determine who your best customers are and create targeted landing pages focused on those specific groups of customers. If you do a quick Google search for Shopify’s landing pages you can see they have created targeted landing pages for their top customer segments.

Different landing pages convert different demographics and interests.

You can use these as examples of how to create targeted landing pages for your top customer groups and demographics.

2. Landing Page AB Testing: Experiment with Animated Headlines

Headlines can make or break your landing page, as they are the first words that capture your visitor’s attention. It’s a simple AB test that can make a dramatic impact on conversions, and it can be done using most AB testing tools.

The key to the headline AB test is to change nothing but the headline. For example, you can see how ActiveCampaign changed from a simple headline about their features…

ActiveCampaign’s headline about features.

…to a better headline about the benefits their customers can expect when using their service.

Headline about benefits.

This change proved to be a winner, as they have kept it since 2015 with a constantly changing message about their benefits. Therefore. test your headline.

This animated headline with benefits proved to be a winner

3. Landing Page Split Test Idea: Vary Featured Homepage Products

In most cases, your homepage will be the most popular landing page on your website. Hence, it will be a page where you should do extensive AB testing.

One test you can do to see if you can increase conversions is simply changing your featured product.

Nest does this by swapping out its popular monitoring camera (formerly Dropcam)…

Nest featuring its Nest Cam on the homepage.

…with its popular thermostat controller.

Nest featuring its thermostat on its homepage

This test is currently running (as noted by the ?alt=1 at the end of their homepage URL), so we’ll have to see which one wins in the end.

In some cases, you may want to change your featured product based on the one that is currently getting featured coverage in the media. Or whether that coverage is positive or negative.

4. Creative Landing Page AB Testing Idea: Explore Different Stories

Do stories resonate with your customers and if so, which stories translate into the most sales? Find out through AB testing. Apple did this in this past by running multiple campaigns on their website, social media, and television ads featuring stories about musicians…

Apple’s landing page story appealing to musicians

…explorers…

Apple’s story appealing to explorers

…environmentalists…

Apple’s story appealing to environmentalists

…parents…

Apple’s story appealing to parents

…and many other page visitors. The goal was to show how their products could help tell everybody’s story. No matter what they did or how much of an impact they made in the world.

Apple ultimately went back to a homepage focused on its latest products, but without AB testing, Apple couldn’t just assume that approach would convert the highest.

5. AB Testing your Landing Page: Shift the Focus to One Product at a Time

Landing pages have better conversion rates when there is one, clear call-to-action; sometimes that CTA is buying a product. But when your top landing page is your homepage, you can’t focus on just one product, right?

Maybe you can. In the past, Logitech had a pretty standard homepage that offered up all of its products all at once to homepage visitors.

Logitech’s original, more traditional homepage

But now, Logitech gives visitors a tour through their top products, one at a time.

Logitech’s new homepage focusing on a single product

In a few moments, you are completely immersed in a particular product and its main benefit, thanks to this new landing page. It’s definitely a way of landing page AB testing you will want to try if you have a few products you can highlight in this fashion.

6. Transform Your Hero Image to Video

You know that great image of your product that you use to compel people to sign up or buy? Why not convert it into a video that dives even deeper into exactly what happens with that feature of your product. MailChimp made that change with their landing page, going from a screenshot of their newsletter designer…

Mailchimp’s landing page with an image of newsletter editor

…to a video of how their newsletter designer worked.

Video of their newsletter editor increased Mailchimp’s landing page conversion rate.

Instead of hoping that an image would convince visitors that their newsletter designer was easy to use, as the landing page claimed, the video was right there to prove it.

While their current landing page features a different, shorter animation, it still features one that demonstrates the ease of use of their newsletter designer. Thus proving that since 2012, video and animation on the landing page beats a screenshot for conversions.

7. Try a Change of Scenery: AB Testing Landing Page Copy vs Image

Sometimes it’s not text or functionality that will make your site convert better, it’s simply imagery that matches the story of your value proposition. Zillow experimented with this idea by changing the background of its search.

One variation was a neighborhood overview with home sale prices, which actually contradicts the line below the image about looking for rentals.

Zillow’s background showing homes with their prices isn’t relevant to people looking for rental property. Especially with a message at the bottom of the page specifically written for renters.

Another variation used an image of a specific home, which could appeal to both for sale and for rent searchers.

Zillow’s new image says “home” whether you’re buying or renting

It seems that they have stuck with the individual home view as it works with what most searchers are looking for.

8. Landing Page A B Testing Basics: Rearrange the Elements

It may not be your product, your service, your copy, your CTA button, your colors, or other elements on your page that are lowering your conversions. It may simply be the order in which they are presented.

Just like when you rearrange all the furniture in your house because it just doesn’t quite feel right, you might want to do the same with your landing page.

Take AgoraPulse, for example. They went from this…

AgoraPulse home page before ab testing

…to this.

AgoraPulse home page after split test

It’s easy to see why the latter layout works. It flows right into starting your free trial after a simple and convincing headline and subhead. And for visitors still not convinced they should convert, there’s simple video and bullet points to convince them to click that call to action button.

9. Copy Your Competitors

The most creative AB tests might be ones you don’t run on your own website. In addition to AB testing tools, there are tools that will alert you to when your competitors make changes to their websites. Potentially based off of their own AB Testing landing page experiments.

Rival IQ monitors your competitor’s website to see if changes have been made to it recently. The entry level plan allows you to track up to 15 companies. You’re able to track each company’s website design history along with their social media accounts, organic search rankings, and paid search traffic.

In the website history dashboard, you can view a variety of web pages from your competitor’s websites.

Depending on how long the company has been in Rival IQ’s database, you can get a couple of year’s worth of design history from each company.

ActiveCampaign’s design history over a few years

When you click on a particular month, you see the breakdown of when particular changes occurred. As well as the ability to click upon a particular design to see the full landing page.

Zeroing into the competitor’s design changes.

This will give you an idea of what AB tests a competitor has run in the past. Based on the length of time a competitor has stuck with a particular design, you will know which test was the presumed winner. That is, it was statistically significant in terms of increasing their conversions. Be it for their homepage, pricing page, features page, or other significant landing pages.

ActiveCampaign’s pricing page history

In addition, you can sign up for email alerts when your competitors make major changes to their website. This will let you know when your competitors have run new tests on their website and made changes based on their results. Or you may even see the tests themselves in action as the pages change from their original to alternative versions.

If you have a lot of competitors, and you’re not sure which to monitor, use the BuiltWith Google Chrome extension. It will help you find out if a particular competitor’s website is using AB testing software. Chances are, the ones that are will be the ones that will be making frequent changes.

BuiltWith browser extension for analytics and tracking

What are your unique approaches to Start A B testing your landing page?

If you’ve already done the standard AB tests on your landing pages, then we hope that these additional split test ideas will further help you increase website conversions. Just like it has for the brands and online businesses mentioned here.

Have you been running or reading about some interesting AB tests? We’d love to hear about them in the comments.

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Kristi Hines

Kristi Hines is a freelance blogger, and social media enthusiast. You can follow her latest tweets about business and marketing @kikolani or posts on Facebook @kristihinespage to stay informed.

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