The fifth in a continuing series on Holiday Conversion Tips

Get ready to put away the pumpkins and break out the holiday lights! It’s time to prepare for your traffic to grow now that holiday shopping is moving into full swing. This is the perfect time to use Smart Offers to maximize holiday shopping revenue, and A/B split testing will tell you the most enticing offers to drive conversions this season.

A/B split tests of Smart Offers will help you learn which offers have the best response and conversion rates in advance of the holiday traffic. For example, you can test two different incentives: free shipping and 10 percent off. Use visitor information, such as the location associated with their IP address, to make offers to certain visitors—perhaps free shipping to those in New York and 10 percent off to those in Ohio—and evaluate their response. You may find that the response rate is twice as high for free shipping vs 10 percent off.

You can run this test offer for a week, then try another test offer—pit free shipping against 20 percent off, or a free gift. Once you’ve identified a relative hierarchy of offer results, you can decide to activate the optimal offers across your entire website traffic, or a larger segment—just in time for Cyber Monday.

Replayphotos.com used Spring Metrics to discover that visitors from Arizona responded particularly well to a certain offer. This drove a 2.46 percent conversation rate, which happens to be 3x higher than the sitewide rate for the same time period.

Additionally, customer response may vary greatly depending on location, age, gender, etc., and different offers appeal to some customers, but not others. You can also use split testing to identify different offers to show to different visitor segments.

Knowing your customers will increase conversions and profits. Use A/B split testing now to discover how to best convert holiday visits into sales.  For more useful tips on how to get your company ready for the season, download our free holiday guide!