Customer surveys and A/B testing are two complementary methods that, when combined, create a powerful engine for conversion optimization. Surveys reveal the "why": the user’s intent, confusion or frustration, while A/B testing validates potential solutions with real behavioral data.
Customer Surveys provide qualitative insights, while A/B testing provides quantitative data, allowing your business to create a more user-focused and data-driven approach. In this article, we’ll walk you through how to use both approaches effectively inside CoreMedia.
Step 1: Uncover the "why" with Customer Surveys
Before you start experimenting with changes, you need to understand what’s really causing the drop. Guesswork can be costly and very time-consuming. This is where Customer Surveys become essential, as it allows you to directly tap into the minds of your users and customers to gather valuable insight.
How to use surveys effectively:
- Identify key drop-off points: Use analytics to pinpoint the pages or stages in the funnel where users abandon your site. These will be the top candidates for deploying a survey.
- Use targeted questions: Craft concise and focused questions relevant to the specific page or process. For example:
- "What was the main reason you didn't complete your purchase today?" (on a checkout page)
- "Was there anything unclear on this page?" (on a product detail page)
- "How would you rate your experience with our website today?" (exit survey)
- "What could we do to improve this (specific feature/page)?"
Keep your surveys short: Respect your website visitors’ time and aim for a few well-crafted questions rather than a lengthy questionnaire that will most likely be ignored.
Use smart timing: Trigger pop-up or overlay surveys after a certain time on a page or exit intent. This can be set up and initiated by the workflow engine in CoreMedia Experience Platform.
Analyze the feedback: Look for recurring themes and pain points by examining the feedback. Are users confused about shipping? Are they unsure about pricing? This qualitative data helps shape your hypotheses for testing.
Step 2: Test your hypotheses with A/B Testing
Once you have a better understanding of the “why” behind your declining conversion rates through survey data, it's time to test potential solutions with A/B testing.
A/B testing involves comparing two or more variations of an element on a web page, like a headline, CTA, or image, and showing them to different segments of your website visitors. By tracking which version performs better, you can make data-driven decisions about what resonates with your audience.
A/B Testing in CoreMedia:
- Test different variations: Within CoreMedia Experience Platform, you can easily create different versions of content elements, such as text, images, and buttons within specific areas of your pages without requiring significant development effort, and then use our A/B testing capabilities to control which variation is displayed to which audience.
- Personalization: Want to go even deeper? With CoreMedia, you can also test personalized content for different audience segments to discover what resonates most with each.
How to run effective A/B Tests:
- Formulate test scenarios: Develop specific and testable ideas based on what you learned from surveys.
- Test one element at a time: To accurately attribute changes in conversion rates, isolate your test element.
- Define clear goals: What exactly are you trying to improve — click-through rate, purchases, form completions?
- Ensure sufficient duration time: Allow your tests to run long enough to gather meaningful data. A/B tests should run for a minimum of 2 weeks and up to 6 weeks.
- Analyze and implement: Once the test concludes, analyze the data to determine which variation performed better and use the winning variation. Then test again.
Why you should combine Surveys and A/B Testing
Surveys tell you “why” users behave a certain way, while A/B testing provides the data-driven validation of potential solutions. When used together, they create a powerful feedback loop for continuous improvement:
- Surveys identify problems and generate hypotheses.
- A/B testing validates or confirms those hypotheses.
- The results of A/B tests can inform further survey questions and testing ideas.
Don't let a dip in conversion rates discourage you. By actively listening to your users through surveys and systematically testing potential solutions through A/B testing, you can not only recover but also build a website that consistently converts. With CoreMedia Experience Platform, it’s easy to implement both without the need for heavy development resources.
Want to learn more? Get in touch today and learn how CoreMedia can help you build high-performing, conversion-optimized digital experiences.
