Most people think of testing as what happens before website content is created. Requirements are written, hopefully (I really hope!), and quality assurance analysts test against them for functionality with a pass/fail result. This is not the focus for most marketers or where the testing should stop – which is why I have chosen this topic for my inaugural blog post series.
Testing can take on many facets. We hear about functional testing, non-functional testing, accessibility testing and so on (and try not to fall asleep), but once all of those have been completed, satisfying the success criteria, I’ve seen a lot of shops stop. Equally as important as those tests listed above is keeping our audiences in mind. Testing content as well as functionality when building a website can provide lots of benefits too. Increasing conversions is usually a strong motivator for diving into the world of A/B and multivariate testing because while we can assume what our users are looking for, until we test it, we really may have no idea.
Would you be likely to click a call-to-action if the headline didn’t speak to you? Don’t know what speaks to your targets or can’t decide what resonates with your audiences? Test it!
Sitecore definitely provides a user-friendly way to get up and running with testing. You can test a simple component or a whole page (maybe start with the former to get your feet wet). My colleagues and I have definitely spent longer than we should have debating between multiple variations of a headline or call-to-action. The only way to end the debate? Testing! We were able to see what worked and what did not and pivot our approach to meet our business goals.
Setting up content testing can be a challenge, but over the next few posts of this series, I will cover some tips and tricks for Sitecore testing that I’ve found useful over the years. Next on the docket will be how to get involved in the build process to set yourself up for testing down the road because going back and making changes can be (horribly) awesome!
Stay tuned!
