5 CRO Experiments to Run with the Intelligems Content Testing Tool

Why content test

Experimentation & AB Testing are critical parts of website development and optimization, especially for e-commerce stores on Shopify that are fighting for customers every day. This process of experimentation is often referred to as CRO (or Conversion Rate Optimization).

With an e-commerce store, you’re typically paying to drive thousands of visitors to your site each day, so it’s absolutely necessary to undertake a process of refining and adjusting your customer journey so you can make the experience as seamless as possible, and ultimately convert as many of these visitors into customers as you can. 

While intuition is great in the early stages – and a great way to develop hypotheses – guesswork is not a reliable strategy in the long term, and instead e-commerce brands have turned to a variety of platforms to help them run AB tests and make data-driven decisions. With experiments, brands can try a couple of different experiences, and see if they improve conversion rate, average order value, or overall profit.

At Intelligems, we’ve largely focused on AB testing for pricing, discounts, and shipping testing.  For other types of tests, which can also be incredibly impactful, we usually would refer our customers to Google Optimize, but with the news that this free tool is sunsetting in September, we decided to start supporting these other kinds of tests and build a suite of content testing features for Shopify brands.  The unique features available are tailored for Shopify stores and open up a ton of new A/B test types and possibilities for our customers. 

Here are some of the most powerful types of tests we’ve seen our customers running so far to drive extra conversions, revenue, and profit. 

Test new versions of your landing pages

You probably already know that landing pages are a great marketing tool. They help educate a customer and smooth their path to purchasing, helping increase conversions and decrease the cost of acquisitions. But to tailor the best user experience to see these results, you need to iterate on your landing pages. 

• What content resonates the best?

• What should you share? In what order should you share it?

• Should you provide an introductory offer? If so, what should it be?

A great way to iterate is via AB tests - trying out different versions with different content offers to improve conversion rate and AOV. With Intelligems, you can easily set these up as redirect tests. Simply create two (or five!) versions of your landing page, and Intelligems will split the traffic across these in real time - you’ll then be able to measure things like which one converts best, which ones have the best AOV, and which discounts are most effective/profitable. 

If you want to get fancy, you can even use Intelligems UTM targeting to build “full-funnel” tests. That means that you link different ads to different landing pages, and can track how that full funnel performs - from the CAC that’s being reported in the ad platform down to the orders you’re getting in Shopify and the relevant profitability. 

Change your PDP layout

The PDP (product description page) is potentially the most important touch point between you and your customers. Your PDP should not just offer product info and be visually appealing but also showcase its value, answer questions your customers may have about the product, and ultimately help drive conversions and sales. All in all: it’s your best chance to convince someone to click the “add to cart” button.

The price obviously plays a big role in determining whether the customer buys (and we can A/B test that as well!). But the content, layout, and UX of that page can also have a massive impact on conversions! We’ve seen customers use Intelligems Content Testing to support several different types of tests on the PDP. For example, they have:

• Tested a new hero image or product title

• Tested showing/hiding a new module that shows key features of the product

• Tested adding an upsell module to the page

• Tested the layout of the buy box (especially if they have subscription or volume purchase options!)

• To adjust the copy to highlight a value proposition

The good news is: you can use a redirect test to do all of this and use Shopify's view parameter to help create different versions of the pages (so you can essentially attach a different view parameter to your Shopify store’s URL to see which works better)

Rolling out a new theme

Maybe you want to take a bigger step, and entirely redesign your site. While you might think it looks great, you want to ensure that all of your site visitors and potential customers will agree before you roll it out to everyone – here’s where the Intelligems content testing feature comes in handy. There are two different roads to take:

• If you’re building new pages one at a time, you can set up multiple redirect tests (like the PDP tests mentioned above) to test one page/page type at a time and make sure its performance is as good (ideally better) than the previous one on conversion rate, AOV, and revenue per visitor.

• If you have a completely new sitewide theme, you can use the theme testing tool to send a portion of the traffic to the new theme and keep the other portion going to your original one. This lets you see a real-time comparison of the two and allows you to understand if your new version really does perform better.

Testing offers

Maybe you have all sorts of offers listed on your site - the banner, PDP, and landing pages. Sometimes price testing may be the answer here if you want to see how different types of promotions perform (e.g., a % off vs. $ off offer). But the way that these offers are presented can also be impactful. Maybe you have a new customer on the landing page, or you’re trying to strategically place a bulk discount, or you want to advertise a promo code to all customers in your announcement bar/banner. Maybe you want to only show an offer to customers coming from a specific channel or influencer link. To see any of these things, you can use the Intelligems content testing. For example, you could:

• Use the “find & replace” tool to change the coupon code you’re showing, or the placement of the promo

• Use redirect testing to send customers to different landing pages with various offers

• Use our targeting & personalization tools to only show offers to particular segments of your traffic

These will help you figure out how to get the most out of your promotional dollars. You can decide the best placement and types of offers, and then AB test the offer amounts to see the incremental impact of these offers and make sure they’re generating new profit instead of just giving discounts away for free. As always with Intelligems, when you run these tests you’re able to track AOV, revenue per visitor, and most importantly: profit per visitor

Testing a new app or merchandising strategy

Say you want to install a new app that adds a new section or widget to your site. For example, an upsell module, a video overlay onto your collection pages, or an Instagram-stories type UI to your home page You can use Intelligems’ content testing to show/hide these apps and their modules to different portions of your customers. These can be set up via our Javascript API, which lets your developers dynamically change styling, hide modules, or inject custom code for different groups. You can then track the AOV/conversion/revenue to make sure that the app is actually giving you the expected lift and ROI that you wanted

So if you initially came to Intelligems to try out price, shipping, or discount testing, think about how content testing could further your website optimization process.