How to Start A/B Testing on BigCommerce to Scale Your Store

As someone that manages an ecommerce store you’ve probably found yourself struggling to choose which copy, page layout, product images or even the color of your add to cart button that would lead to the most sales.

No matter what you’ve had to choose between – A/B testing is the perfect solution to replace guesswork with data-backed decisions.

A/B testing lets you directly compare two distinct options to determine which produces the best outcome, and the proof is in the pudding. According to Zipdo, the average A/B test improves conversion rates by 49% – that means if you convert 100 people per month on average, you have the potential to ramp that number up to 149.

Split testing is about continuously refining and optimizing your site to learn what resonates best with your audience. There will always be a more effective web page layout or a more compelling headline or images, and being persistent with A/B testing could mean the difference between hundreds or hundreds of thousands of conversions.

The benefits of A/B testing on your BigCommerce store

A/B testing is the foundation of informed decision-making. If it’s done correctly, it could be one of the most efficient ways to grow your BigCommerce store. You can experiment and split test almost anything across your entire store and here are a few reasons why you should.

Test new page designs while minimizing your risk

Changing something like a product or collection page layout is a big risk.. You might be concerned that a new layout may confuse customers or decrease engagement. A/B allows you to make design changes while limiting the number of customers who see that variant, reducing your overall risk while still allowing you to try something new.

After initiating your experiment you’ll quickly be able to collect insights on how your customers interact with the new design, helping you determine if it was a good move or not.

Increase the effectiveness of your paid campaigns

A/B testing is an effective way to make sure your ad campaigns convert at a high rate without having to invest a ton of money upfront. Testing different landing page copy, images and entire page layouts for example will help you determine which version of your campaign is most effective.

Uncover shopping behaviors

Wouldn’t running an ecommerce business be so much easier if we could look into our shoppers’ minds to understand what they really want? While A/B testing is by no means a crystal ball, it’s a powerful tool for behavioral analysis – understanding what factors influence your customers’ buying decisions.

Through your testing, you might learn that shoppers respond better to a specific call to action, prefer certain colors, or find a certain style of product description more appealing. These rich insights into customer preferences and behavior are like striking gold for any business. The more you understand your customers, the better your chances of meeting their needs and improving sales.

Where to Begin Testing on Your BigCommerce Store

Convinced and ready to use A/B testing on your BigCommerce store but not sure where to start? Deciding where to start testing can be a challenging thought – the key is to choose aspects that hold the most potential for conversion rate improvements and significant customer interaction. Let’s check out where you can begin.

Product Pages

One of the most rewarding starting points for A/B testing on your BigCommerce store is the product pages. Given how important they are on the conversion path, making them more effective can lead to an improvement in overall sales. 

Product pages are essentially where the deal is sealed or lost – either customers are enticed enough to buy or they aren’t. They contain the most decisive information that customers rely on before making a purchase, meaning that they’re full of opportunities to experiment.

But here’s a tip: don’t start with your top-selling product. This little nugget of advice might sound counterintuitive as you’d naturally think your top-sellers are where you’d want to optimize conversions most. However, it also means the stakes are much higher. Just one mistake could lead to a huge negative impact on your bottom line.

Instead, your A/B testing should focus on a product that consistently performs well but doesn’t necessarily have superstar status – such as your 4th or 5th highest-selling product. These items will let you collect some meaningful data without putting your most valuable products at risk.

Once you’ve targeted the right page, another big consideration is to start small. There’s no reason to overhaul your entire page – in fact, that would actually be counterproductive and make it more difficult to figure out what change is driving any differences.

Start by experimenting with just one or two elements. Often, a good starting point is to adjust the main product image or the product description. Maybe it’s taking a brand new high-quality photo that employs different lighting, angles, or backgrounds. Alternatively, maybe you want to tweak the description and do some storytelling or write copy more centered around the product features.

Implementing these changes one bit at a time provides a more controlled testing environment. You’ll be able to clearly see what makes a meaningful difference, as well as roll back on changes that have a negative impact on your sales metrics.

Blog Posts

Blog posts are also an area ripe with opportunities for A/B testing. While they’re informative pieces at their core, they all also represent chances to lure traffic toward sales conversion. The best way to pick and choose which blog posts to target, however, starts with analytics. Tools like Google Analytics are powerful when it comes to insights into traffic. The dashboard will let you know which posts are most worthy of testing because of their high visibility.

To convert this traffic into revenue, it’s time to get experimenting. You might want to tweak headlines, change call-to-actions, or adjust the placement of sign-up forms within the post, for instance. If you haven’t already, another effective strategy is to feature specific products within the actual content of the blog post. Your readers might prefer banners showcasing your products, or maybe they like when they’re subtly embedded within the content.

Either way, the products you choose to feature in the post should integrate naturally with the blog’s content to avoid coming across as an aggressive sales pitch. If your blog post is about summer fashion tips, you wouldn’t want to display a winter coat!

Homepage

Being the first point of contact a potential customer has with your online store, optimizing your ecommerce homepage can have great effects on your conversion rates. Since homepages are typically less focused and more holistic, however, you’ll need to seek answers to a couple of questions. What do users usually click on after landing on the homepage? What section of your site do they navigate to next? What seems to hold their attention most? The best way to find out? Data tools like Google Analytics.

Google Analytics can give you serious insights into user interaction data, including a map of which pages your customers visit after landing on the homepage. Here’s how you can access that information.

How to Analyze ‘Next Page’ Traffic from Your Homepage in Google Analytics

1. Log in to your Google Analytics account.
2. Under ‘Customization,’ click ‘Custom Reports.’
3. Set ‘Page’ and ‘Previous Page Path’ as dimensions (the tabs in green) and ‘Pageviews’ as a metric (the tabs in blue).
4. Set your report filters to include the ‘Previous Path Page’ of a URL and exclude the ‘Page’ of a certain URL.
5. Save that report and analyze your insights. The list of pages in the first column will be the ‘next page’ a user has visited from the page listed in the 2nd column.

These insights can guide any structural changes to your homepage. Let’s look at an example – if a large percentage of users navigate to a specific product page right after landing on the homepage, you could consider making that product page more accessible right from the homepage. You might adjust the position of the relevant links by moving them higher up on the page or making them bigger and bolder to catch the user’s eye. If applicable, you might even add that product to the homepage to reduce navigation steps even more.

What to A/B Test on your BigCommerce Store

You can experiment with almost every element of your BigCommerce store to find new ways of attracting and converting more customers. To get you started, we’ve come up with a few ideas to help you begin your A/B testing journey:

Copy

Headlines – Test different headlines on your homepage, product pages and even collections pages to see if certain verbiage resonates better with your audience.

Product Names – Sometimes changing the product name to something more descriptive can increase your chances of converting your customers.

Product Descriptions – The ideal product description creates an image in your customer’s mind that represents what it feels like to physically hold your product. Test different ways to create that mental image in your customer’s mind.

Tone – Using a different tone might excite or engage more of your customers, give your copy a little attitude or personality and see how it impacts your conversions.

Images

Product Images – Test new product images, or even which image your serve up first on your product pages. Add new backgrounds, or remove backgrounds entirely to see if those changes create more engagement. 

Aerie is a great example of how changing (or not changing) your product photos can lead to a big boost in sales, a 26% boost to be exact.

Product Videos – Test your product pages with and without videos that show off the benefits of your products; what it’s like to use or try on your product to help customers get a better understanding of your product before they purchase. Not only can videos help convince customers to purchase, it can also help reduce returns.

RevZilla is well known for their product videos on (almost) every product they offer.

Page Structure

Page layout can completely change the way your customers engage with your product pages. Test the placement of product reviews, your descriptions, and even the add to cart button to see if a new structure helps convert more customers.

Customers browsing your site may not be scrolling through your pages as you’d expect, it’s important to test new layouts regularly to make sure you’re offering the most seamless and smoother shopping experience.

CTA Buttons

These can be anything from your newsletter sign up to your add to cart and checkout buttons, but either way you should always test new variations of your CTAs to make sure you’re getting the most out of your BigCommerce store.

It’s common to test new button colors, even slight hue or shade changes, and the button copy itself. Test different variations to see which resonates and gets the most attention from your customers.

CTA buttons can be one of the most important items to test as your explore new ways to grow your business.

Analyzing Test Results

After you’ve carried out A/B testing on your BigCommerce store, you’ll need to analyze the results carefully. If you haven’t yet set up Google Analytics for your BigCommerce Store, you’ll want to do so for a deep look into your site’s data. Here’s how to do what’s called setting up your Google tag.

Setting Up Google Analytics for Your BigCommerce Store

1. In your BigCommerce account, click ‘Settings.’
2. In the ‘Advanced’ section, choose ‘Data Solutions.’
3. In the ‘Web analytics’ section on the same row as ‘Google Analytics 4,’ click Connect.
4. Paste your Google tag in the box and click ‘Connect.’

Achieving Statistical Significance

Statistical significance refers to how much the observed difference between your A/B variants isn’t just a random occurrence but a genuine result of the changes you’ve made. It’s a number that lets you make more confident decisions, as it’ll demonstrate whether or not the results are likely to be replicated in real-world situations.

An acceptable statistical significance depends on several factors, like your industry or the size of the chance, but an A/B is usually considered statistically significant when there’s a 95% chance or higher that the results aren’t due to randomness.

There are two main ways to calculate significance, including a ‘t-test’ – comparing two averages – and a ‘chi-square test’ – comparing categorical data like counting successes and failures and whether the difference between them is significant.

Luckily, there are a few online software options that exist to simplify the process.

• Neil Patel’s A/B Testing Significance Calculator – Allows you to compare the number of visitors and number of conversions in the control to the visitors and conversions in the variation and calculate significance using a P-value.
• Survey Monkey’s Statistical Significance Calculator – For a more complex calculator, Survey Monkey’s calculator also includes a confidence % level, as well as one-sided and two-sided hypotheses.

• Evan Miller’s A/B Tools – Evan Miller’s site has a range of intuitive statistical calculators that can help you plan and analyze your A/B tests, from a sample size calculator to a chi-squared test and even survival curves.

How Shogun Can Help You Run A/B Tests on Your BigCommerce Store

A/B testing is a champ when it comes to optimization, conversions, and user retention. But while the concept of A/B testing is quite straightforward, the execution can sometimes be a bit challenging. Shogun is an accessible solution that can amp up your A/B testing game just like that. 

Seamless Integration with BigCommerce

Shogun is a native BigCommerce A/B testing solution that serves to optimize your storefront. No need to jump through hoops or rely on third-party connections – the transitions and testing are seamless, making A/B testing as straightforward as ever.

User-Friendly for Marketing Teams

With no complicated setup processes and a dynamic drag-and-drop visual editor, anyone on your marketing team can quickly create new variants for any BigCommerce page type. Its user-friendly interface doesn’t require in-depth coding expertise, meaning that creatives, content creators, and marketers can easily get involved in the testing process.

Easy to Get Started

Shogun’s standout attribute is its fuss-free setup process. Its simplicity and intuitiveness mean you can get tests up and running in no time. In just 5 steps, you can launch a test and start increasing conversions. With Shogun, you can enjoy visually striking layouts and a library of ready-to-use design elements, upgraded analytics, SEO optimization tools, and advanced multivariate testing if you want to examine more than one variable at the same time.

Ready to boost your BigCommerce store’s conversion rates with A/B testing? Try Shogun free today!