How to A/B Test Your Sales Funnels to Maximize Conversions

Are you tired of struggling to reach your sales funnel goals?

Do you wish there was a surefire way to maximize conversions and get more out of your funnels?

If so, then buckle up, because in this blog post we’re going to reveal how you can use A/B testing software and AI copywriting tools to take your sales funnel conversions to the next level.

Let's get started!

What is a Sales Funnel?

Before delving into the details on how A/B testing works, let’s quickly review what a sales funnel is. In the context of this article, a sales funnel is an automated checkout process used to convert leads into paying customers through a sequence of offers.

It typically begins with a free opt-in offer, such as a lead magnet. The goal of the opt-in is to entice your website visitors to become leads through a value exchange — for example, their email address for your fee lead magnet.

This initial sales funnel stage works best when your lead magnet solves a problem they’re experiencing. So, for your opt-in to work, you first need to clearly understand your target audience and what their needs are.

Next comes your paid offer. At this stage, your newly-minted leads land on a thank you page where you provide instructions on how to access your lead magnet, followed by a sales pitch for a paid product that takes your lead magnet to the next logical level.

For example, if your opt-in offers a free Facebook ad-creation checklist, your paid offer might be your 12-module turn-key Facebook ad-creation online course for $39.95.

Finally, your third sales funnel stage involves offering an upsell.

This is an add-on product that enhances your paid offer by saving your customer even more time, money or both — for example, your upsell offer could consist of 50 professionally designed ready-to-use facebook ad templates for an additional $19.95.

Now, every offer (both free and paid) needs to have the right sales copy in order to convert visitors into leads and leads into customers. So, to maximize your conversions, you’ll need to A/B test different designs and content variations.

What is A/B Testing?

A/B testing helps improve  your funnel conversions by running two (or more) versions of your sales funnel simultaneously to see which one performs better.

The goal is to optimize funnel performance using data science, so it’s important to track all results throughout each experiment in order to make informed decisions based on statistical significance and not hunches or gut feel.

By comparing two versions of a particular element, you can quickly find out what works for your sales funnel and what doesn’t, allowing you to quickly and efficiently optimize for conversions.

Your funnel software will do this automatically and even select the winner for you in real time using statistical analysis.

You can use A/B testing to test virtually any element of your funnel, including your:

• Color scheme
• Headlines
• Bullet points
• Sales copy
• Images
• Buttons (or any other type of CTA)

How To A/B Test a Sales Funnel

Once you’ve created all your different sales funnel stages in your funnel creation tool, including offers, sales copy, images, and CTAs, it’s time to develop your A/B testing plan.

Since you’ll be testing at least two versions of every funnel stage, and there are so many elements to work with, you’ll need to follow a testing hierarchy to get meaningful outcomes.

Here’s a proposed hierarchy for optimal results, shown in decreasing impact on conversion effectiveness:

1. Test your images first
2. Once you find the winner, then test your headline
3. Then test bullet points
4. Then test CTAs
5. Test any remaining sales copy (i.e. text in paragraph form)
6. Test the time delay before your offer appears (e.g. 30 seconds after the visitor lands on your page, website, blog post, etc. vs. 15 seconds, time delay trigger vs. scroll percentage trigger, exit intent trigger vs. time delay trigger, etc.)
7. Test the colors in your design
8. (Optional) Finally, test the type of popup to use for your funnels - e.g. lightbox vs screen filler vs scroll mat vs ribbon, etc.

Once your A/B tests have achieved statistical significance, your funnel software will show you who the winners are. How long tests will take will depend on your website traffic.

For high-traffic websites, it may take just a couple of days to arrive at a winner. For newer sites, it may take several weeks to get a meaningful result.

How To Create A/B Tests At Scale

Even though the expression “A/B testing” implies testing two versions, you want to test a lot more than two headlines, two sets of bullets, etc. In fact, the more variations you test the better your results will be over time.

Now, coming up with multiple funnel experiments can be tedious and time-consuming. For starters, you need to ensure that the copy in all variations is equally compelling and this can lead to creative exhaustion (coming up with uninspiring options) or writer’s block (running out of ideas.)

Thankfully, there are AI copywriting tools out there that enable you to automate this process so you can scale up your funnel testing without suffering from any of the above content creation issues.

These tools allow you to generate multiple funnel versions very rapidly, making it a lot easier to optimize your funnel performance.

What Are AI Copywriting Tools?

AI copywriting tools are software solutions that use artificial intelligence to generate professional-quality sales funnel copy and other content elements at the push of a button.

These tools make use of neural networks and AI techniques like natural-language processing (NLP) to emulate the writing skills of professional copywriters.

In fact, these tools are getting so good that most times readers are unable to distinguish the text generated by a human from that generated by the machine.

How To Leverage AI Writing Tools For A/B Testing

The best way to illustrate the power of AI copywriting tools for sales funnel A/B testing is through an example.

Say, we want to come up with 10 different headline variations for the sales funnel opt-in mentioned earlier (the free offer for a Facebook ad-creation checklist.)

In order to generate these variations I’m going to use Jasper, a popular AI-powered copywriting assistant.

So, I’ll begin by selecting their Perfect Headline AI template, and then answering the template’s guidance prompts, including:

Product description: (this is a brief description outlining the benefits of the lead magnet)

“Facebook ad-creation checklist that allows advertisers to save hours of work and eliminate typical mistakes that get ads rejected.”

Company/product name: (this is the name of your website, company or brand)

“Marketing Guru”

Customer Avatar: (this is your target audience)

“advertisers”

Tone of voice: (this is the desired style for the headline)

“Persuasive”

Let’s now give the AI tool a spin and see what it can come up with:

Great: 10 perfectly usable headlines to A/B test with (and quite persuasively written, if you ask me!)

Now, all you have to do is to rinse and repeat this process for all textual elements in your sales funnels — opt-in, purchase and upsell — and within minutes and minimal effort on your part you’ll have an abundance of well-crafted test candidates.

In Conclusion

A/B testing is essential for funnel conversion as it allows you to explore different strategies and tactics within a funnel in order to optimize its performance and drive more sales.

The power of funnel optimization should never be underestimated — a one or two percent increase in funnel conversions could translate to thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of additional dollars for your business, depending on the size of your website traffic.

Since the cost of A/B testing is negligible compared to the potential upside for your business, the more high-quality testing options you can generate with the help of AI copywriting tools the more A/B tests you can run and the better your conversion results will become over time.

So, go ahead and use the advice in this article to start optimizing your sales funnels today!