In this guide, you will learn the exact steps for running A/B tests on WordPress for free using Elementor and Google Optimize.
From landing pages to blogs, every type of website requires design decisions.
Sometimes, website owners go with their gut, thinking less about stats and more about what they assume users might enjoy. Although it sounds more romantic, this is not the way to go about improving your user experience and boosting your conversions.
Professionals use A/B testing for a reason. It allows for decision making with the use of cold, hard stats. There’s nothing questionable about it since you compare two variations of one webpage and see which performs the best.
Luckily, A/B testing is both free and relatively simple to set up with the help of Google Optimize. Not only that, but when you utilize Elementor, you can generate landing pages on the fly and test them out without any problems.
What are the Benefits of A/B Testing
A/B Testing Landing Pages
A/B testing is frequently used with landing pages, since these pages are meant to get conversions. If you pay for Google Ads that lead to landing pages, you want to make sure that those pages are ready to convert click-throughs into customers.
What’s great is that landing pages don’t take long to create with a page builder like Elementor. Then, you simply change some elements and run the A/B test for a few weeks.
Newsletter Subscriptions
Newsletter subscriptions are often located on blogs, landing pages, and eCommerce sites. It’s amazing how minor changes to an email subscription form can significantly increase your subscribers.
Contact Forms
Many companies use contact forms to obtain customers. From lawyers to contractors, and hair salons to car dealerships, a contact form is a way for customers to get information before making a purchase. If the contact form isn’t tested and optimized, you might be missing out on valuable leads.
Downloads
As you may know, downloads are typically given away or sold by using buttons on a website. Therefore, an A/B test will help you discover the types of buttons to use, where to place them best; what size and color they should be. It’s all in the name of increasing those downloads and getting people to come back for more.
Important: Timing and Sample Size
One thing to remember when running an A/B test is that you can’t just have it going for a few days. A valuable test is one that runs for at least two weeks (preferably more) and accumulates enough clicks, site visits, or conversions to reveal which variation of your landing page or website is the best.
Landing Page A/B Testing In WordPress With Google Optimize
An easy and extremely powerful, way to create an A/B test for your website or landing page is to utilize the free Google Optimize tool. It has a bit of a learning curve, but it’s free and provides better results than many premium solutions you’d find online. Not only that, once you get it configured you can run an unlimited number of tests for all types of purposes.
For instance, you might want to change the color of a Call to Action button and see if that improves conversions. Or, you may want to compare different variations of a landing page and see how quickly people leave each one. Regardless of your goals, Google Optimize can help you achieve them.
So, start by going to the Google Optimize website and clicking on the Sign Up For Free button.
There are a handful of items you need to configure before launching your A/B test. First of all, set the timing for your test. Click on the Create Schedule button to do this.
Whether you’re making a new account or a property, the last step is to click on the Get Tracking ID button.
After rendering the tracking code, you’ll find a Tracking ID and Global Site Tag. The Global Site tag is what you want to copy to your clipboard. You must paste this code in the section of the webpage you want it to work on. Google explains how to find this tag on your website, and sometimes all you need to do is paste the code in your theme settings or in a Google Analytics plugin. There are several methods for that, so we won’t cover them all here.
Now that you’ve created a property in Google Analytics, go back to the Google Optimize dashboard. Locate the button that says Link Property. Once again, Google provides a few links in there to walk you through the entire process. But we’ll guide you through them here as well.
Since your Google Analytics code is pasted inside the website’s tag, and you’ve made a property inside that Google Analytics account, the Google Optimize account should pull the property into the account.
Click on the dropdown that reads Select a Property. It gives you a list of the properties you currently have. Scroll down to find the one linked to your website in question.
I’m creating a landing page with the Elementor page builder. Therefore, I’d like to test out different layouts to see how many bounces I get with each layout. It’s possible that users become less interested when I start to explain a product, or maybe they like to learn about a product before seeing a Call to Action button. Therefore, I’m figuring out whether I should have the Call to Action right at the top or below some information.
When you find the right property, click on the Link button.
This part is for specifying the type of data you want to collect from this Google Analytics account. So, click on the dropdown to select a view and choose All Web Site Data.
Creating the Landing Pages You Want to A/B Test
An A/B test would be nothing without two similar, yet slightly different, variations of one webpage. For instance, you might change the location or color of a Call to Action button.
As mentioned, I’m using the Elementor page builder to construct a landing page, and I’d like to see if the Call to Action button location affects my conversion rates.
With Elementor, you can Add a New Template directly from the WordPress dashboard.
Once you create and click on one of the variants, it lets you edit them in Google Optimize.
For instance, in the screenshot below you can see that I moved the product information to the top of the landing page. The Call to Action buttons are out of the frame but they are located below the product information.
This is where you specify what you’d like to measure with the test. Google Optimize has a few default objectives that you can choose from (like comparing page visits). I’m measuring the number of bounced visitors for each layout, since I want to see if having product information before the Call to Action is more likely to keep users around longer.
The Next Level of WordPress A/B Testing
A/B testing is an essential part of figuring out which elements on your website are working the best. It takes the guesswork out of converting more customers and ensures that you’re making the right decisions in the future.
I like combining Google Optimize with Elementor, since you’re able to launch a landing page within minutes, then see which variants of that landing page are most likely to get the best results.
If you have any questions about running an A/B test or creating a landing page, let us know in the comments section below.
33 Responses
Nice article, very helpful and informative. Thank you.
Oh I wish you made this into a video. 🙂 I’ll be back later to read.
Excellent tutorial. I doubt many people would be able to get through that convoluted Google process without such detailed instructions. Thanks.
Can you make it a video tutorial? Pleaseeeee.
This is precisely the reason why Elementor should bake AB Testing into its feature set….yesterday. It’s one thing that seems painfully behind development.
Both in terms of performance/page load speed and in terms of integrations with Analytics Adwords and other external software, it makes more sense to use an external service.
I would rather have Elementor focus on what they’re best at, than learn a new field, where companies like Google, Optimizely, VWO, and others are fluent in.
Yea, ok. But first they need to make me a GREEN button that will start my car, make me coffee, and get my kiddos ready for school every morning.
Will be helpful. Thanks Brenda!
A video will do. Article too long.
THanks for your nice information. A video Demo is a better way!
I am not sure if this is allowed or not, thank you for doing the tutorial. There is a plug-in, I’ve been using this for the past few weeks testing it for them. It does what it says on the can. rocketelements.io/
Video will be awesome
Now this is a great article. We need more like these please. How to measure and monitor your screen designs. Also would be nice if we can get a google tag manager tutorial and do more micro tests on buttons, screen scrolling etc. But this is some good content.
Eih guys … Make a video for this 😉
Thank you
There is another solution for split testing in elementor. There is this plugin witch is more easy to set up called “Split test for elementor”. Just take a look at the wordpress plugin diretory. You will find it there. And here for all who wanted to have a video is a small demonstration i guess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iew_Ns21QyM
Google optimize is really good option for A/B testing, especially when you have a tight budget since it’s free (but limited) and yet it’s fully functional and really easy to use. This article should have people to do A/B testing properly, well explained article by the way.
Great help!
However, it remains not very clear for me…. In the case of landing pages, I create 2 pages and A/B tests them as stated. In the case of a page of conversion funnel that is integrated into the website, how do I make Elementor/WP choose one or another?
Agnes
Where this falls apart for me is using the Google tools to modify my Elementor content. It’s like slicing a tomato with an ax.
I’d love the ability to insert a/b templates with shortcodes e.g.
[AB Test One]
[elementor-template id="1"]
[elementor-template id="2"]
[/AB Test One]
And … are you people kidding about the video? Reading is much faster than listening to someone talk, and much easier to skim.
Thank you SO MUCH for this! Since moving away from Divi the one feature I’ve been missing is Spilt Testing! Keep up the good work. Long live Elementor!
muito bom! estou tentando otimizar o site http://www.anunciebrasilclassificados.com.br
That’s one great thing about the Elementor team. They really think about their solution before rolling out their tongue with an answer.
An important point on this solution is that you can do way more than A/B Testing with Google Optimize. They introduced an independent solution for A/B testing, keeping elementor easy to use (which we all like), and an a competitive advantage to other services/tools.
I’ll agree with Matan and Yoel about letting each company focus on what they do best.
Did you take a look at the “Split test for elementor” plugin?
I think Elementor is probably not only the best value for money page builder on the market, but is also the most innovative, with every new update being a real solid improvement or adding a much needed advanced feature.
Its like Ben and the developers are reading my mind and providing everything I need, before I even know I need it.
Over the years I have been on beta teams for other products, but I have never been so surprised and delighted with the amount and quality of product innovation as I have with Elementor.
Truly amazing.
That said, this article points to a big black hole in Elementor.
If you have to write an article this long and so detailed just to implement this functionality in Elementor (when Divi has included it from day one), then there must be several issues at play here, not the least of which being that Ben and the team have not identified A/B Testing as an important issue for us.
I just hope I am wrong and I will see native A/B testing included in Elementor beta some day soon.
Keep up the work guys and gals. You’re doing and outstanding job!
You forgot to mention that you cant deploy page-hding snipet on pages which use elementor canvas layout, because it removes page headers.
Agreed! And it’s much easier to move back a paragraph ?
I’ve followed this article to the T. Is there a way to test out entirely different pages in an A/B test? e.g. /var1/ vs /var2/? I can only see a way to edit minor stuff like buttons & headlines, etc.
Hi Alex – this is a native google optimize feature – its a redirection test 😉
Why not just build all of this tracking directly into the plugin. This is way too much work for the average user when options like clickfunnels do it all. I really want to stay with wordpress and elementor but let’s face it developers are simply out of touch with the real needs of internet marketers and entrepreneurs in 2019.
I have tried Google optimize before it is not simple it will mess up the mobile site layout and I wasn’t able to find styles to apply for break points. I think elementor should be able to do basic AB testing such as show at least two different pages based on URL query
Hi Brenda, how to do a AB split test with diffrent themes from elementor in optimize google?
Imo this is a very tedious process. There is a Split Test Plugin for Elemetor which integrates the whole process and makes it much easier
How about making this into a Video? Use this post as a supplement.