A/B testing on Amazon isn’t as daunting as it sounds. It has been a part of marketing for many years, allowing businesses to gain insights about their audience’s preferences in order to improve engagement and conversions.
A/B testing, or split-testing as it is also known, is where a brand shows two variants of something to see which gets the better response to adapt the final one with the aspects that were popular in the best performing one.
Split-testing is something that can be done on Amazon through ‘Manage Your Experiments’ and used to optimise listings to drive more sales. Experiments lets sellers compare two versions of content against each other so you can see which performs better. At the end of an experiment, the seller can review which version performed the best and then publish the winning content.
How it works is that customers that view a seller’s ASIN’s content are randomly split into two groups. One group sees Version A of content, while the other sees Version B, for the entire experiment, this allows data to constantly collect for both versions allowing for a shorter completion date, rather than having the two versions alternating.
But what can sellers experiment with? Here are the three main areas sellers can split test:
Product titles
Being one of the most important parts of your listings and the shoppers first exposure to text describing your product, it is vital that sellers get their product title right!
Do particular keywords have more of an effect? Is the inclusion of your brand name a positive or negative addition? Do your target audience prefer a concise title or one that gives a bit more of a description. Find out which one is getting the best results and use this format across your other products too.
Primary and supporting images
Pictures are worth 1000 words but not all the words are equally as effective. Experiment with different angles of the images, maybe trial a 360 image to give customers the chance to see the whole product, are informative images better to support or do shoppers prefer lifestyle shots.
For a true test, only one image should be changed on the experimental listing at a time; otherwise it would be impossible to tell which image it was that made the difference.
Content on your product listing
The content on your listing is another place to experiment with, are different keywords more effective? Are shorter sentences more engaging? Do more people convert with certain product features over others? These small tests can help you put together the perfect listing for your customers and then ensuring it meets Amazon’s guidelines and recommendations will give you the perfect listing for Amazon. Both of which should improve conversions on the marketplace.
Be sure, however, that your experimental content is noticeably different from the existing content: If the content is too similar, it is less likely to affect customer behaviour, and you may not be able to confidently determine a winner due to a lack of results.
Here are some tips from Amazon for experiments, as a place to start:
- Reducing product title length to under 100 characters
- Revising your product title to include your Brand name
- Trial making your product title more descriptive to appeal to attributes of interest to your customers, stick within the characters though
- Add creative product imagery to help your product stand out from the competition
- Add high-resolution imagery to your content or refresh your existing imagery
- Use lifestyle imagery or standard product imagery
- Highlight one set of features versus a different set
Other places you can test away from experiments are:
Ad variations
You can also manually test variations of your advertising too, play around with imagery and wording to see which Ads get the most click-throughs to inform your future campaigns.
If you need help optimising your listing through A/B testing or are unsure what to make of the data you receive through split-testing, our Amazon consultants can help you, get in touch today.