Do you want to maximise the impact and conversions from your website? With A/B testing named as the highest ranked method planned for improving conversion, according to Outgrow, organisations are now looking at conversion rate optimisation (CRO) and CRO tools for driving more conversions from their web properties.

In this article, we explore what conversion rate optimisation is, look at two popular conversion rate optimisation tools in Google Optimize and AB Tasty as well as considerations for selecting your organisation’s conversion rate optimisation tool and strategy.

The average ROI of using CRO tools is 224%

Source: VentureBeat

What is conversion rate optimisation (CRO)?

Conversion rate optimization, also known as CRO, is the process of optimising your site or landing page experience based on website visitor behavior to help improve the probability of the visitor taking desired actions (conversions) on a particular page of your website.

Why is conversion rate optimisation (CRO) important?

By its very nature, conversion rate optimisation increases the probability of visitors taking desired actions (such as conversions) on an organisation’s website. Conversion rate optimisation helps you get more out of not only your existing traffic, but also new traffic as your website visitors grow in numbers. Further to this, it can also help you better understand your customers allowing marketers to also potentially lower their acquisition costs for new customers.

“Using correct targeting and testing methods can boost conversion rates up to 300%”

Key elements of conversion rate optimisation

Comparing conversion rate optimisation (CRO) tools - Google Optimize and AB Tasty - Key elements of CRO 1

What is Google Optimize?

Google Optimize is a free website optimization tool that helps online marketers and webmasters increase visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction through ongoing testing of different online content.

Comparing conversion rate optimisation (CRO) tools: Google Optimize and AB Tasty - Optimize logo

Benefits of Google Optimize

  • Google Optimize is a free to use tool
  • Ease of use - simple set up and a visual editor make it easy to run experiments with no coding required which means non-technical staff can easily use the platform
  • Advanced experimentation - import events and goals from Google Analytics as experiment objectives
  • Google Ads Integration - target traffic from particular Google Ads campaigns, ad groups or keywords for your experiment
  • Users can leverage Google Optimizes targeting features to target users by behavior, geography, or technology used
  • Upgrade to Optimize 360 for more advanced features including targeting of Google Analytics audiences, additional testing combinations & simultaneous experiments
  • While Google Optimize does not have heat maps and session recording as part of its offering, it does have a native integration to Hot Jar

Limitations of Google Optimize

  • Limit of 5 simultaneous experiments
  • Limit of 3 experiment objectives
  • There is limited support on the platform as the licenses are free
  • There is no built-in heat map feature

45% of small and medium business don’t optimize their website through A/B testing

Source: Google Surveys, “Website Optimization Challenges for SMBs,” Base: 506 Small/Medium Business Owners and Managers, Google Surveys Audience

What is AB Tasty?

AB Tasty is a SaaS (Software as a Service) solution that’s hosted in the cloud and provides a web interface for the creation of A/B tests across an organisation’s website. You can create your own page variations, configure the test options, define the objectives to be measured, and monitor the results.

Comparing conversion rate optimisation (CRO) tools: Google Optimize and AB Tasty - AB Tasty logo

Benefits of AB Tasty

  • AB Tasty platform will automatically segment your customers into distinct clusters based on their level of engagement (Disengaged, Wanderers, Valuable Visitors, and Loyal Clients) using Machine Learning
  • Engagement Level can be combined with criteria such as last purchase or number of days since last session to build a more granular and more actionable segment
  • AB Tasty provides robust customisation features for pages, including custom CSS and JavaScript
  • AB Tasty provides scenario testing features that let users visualise and step through different page designs before publishing them
  • AB Tasty has a larger limit of experiment goals with 50 allowed
  • AB tasty has dynamic widgets allowing user to build variant version with templates
  • AB Tasty includes a QA mode and allows previews before making changes
  • AB Tasty has 25+ integrations including Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Tealium, Oracle Marketing Cloud and Salesforce DMP

Limitations of AB Tasty

  • AB Tasty is a paid tool with cost dependent on the number of users
  • The GA native integration with AB Tasty only supports report integration meaning GA audiences can not be used as audience targeting in AB Tasty experiments

Use of Google Optimize and AB Tasty

Comparing conversion rate optimisation (CRO) tools - Google Optimize and AB Tasty - Use of Optimize and AB Tasty

Source: HG Insights

Google Optimize vs. AB Tasty? Which should I use as my organisation’s conversion rate optimisation tool?

Before selecting your organisation’s conversion rate optimisation tool, marketers need to consider where it fits within their overall strategy and ask questions such as:

  • What exactly are we looking to achieve with our conversion rate optimisation software (be specific)?
  • What budget do we have (if any) for a conversion rate optimisation tool?
  • What functionality do we need to have access
  • What are our team’s current CRO capabilities? Do they have any experience on any CRO tools already and if so which platform(s)?

With Outgrow identifying that 48% of companies and agencies that use landing pages do not test them to improve conversions, it is important to start testing your conversion points if you are not already. Given Google Optimize is a free CRO tool, it is a great tool to get you started on conversion rate optimisation regardless of the capabilities of your organisation and can provide many opportunities to improve your sites conversions. If however, your organisation has decided to invest budget into CRO and have development resources at its disposal, AB Tasty has additional features and numerous integrations that allow for more advanced and complex testing methodology.

“Top converting companies spend more than 5% of their budgets on optimization”

Conclusion

Both Google Optimize and AB Tasty are effective conversion rate optimisation tools for setting up and managing experiments across your website properties. While there are a few key differences between the platforms, it is important for organisations to consider their overall CRO strategy and budget before deciding on which platform will best meet their needs.

For more information on Google Optimize or AB Tasty and how conversion rate optimisation can improve conversions on your website, please contact your local FiveStones team today.