How to Split-Test Your Donation Forms for Free with A/B testing

It is possible to improve your conversions on your donation forms through setting up A/B split-tests using Google’s Content Experiments for free.

First, make sure that the Google Analytics application is installed in your device.

From there, create three different donations pages – your control page (in this case, one of your donation forms), your variation page and your success page. (You can duplicate your donation forms and make variations to save you time.)

Once these pages have been set up, log into your Google Analytics account. Select the Goals tab.

The next step is to create a conversion goal. To do this, click on New Goal, assign a name for your goal, and select the Destination Type option. Make sure that the Funnel Option is turned off in the settings. For the link for the Destination Page, include the link for your Success page. From the drop-down menu, choose the Begins With option for your Destination Page link. Then click on Save to save the input data.

After saving, go to the Behavior section on your left menu and choose Experiments. Name your experiment and select a metric, choosing the goal you just previously set up in the earlier step. Keep your default settings.

Next, you will be asked to configure your experiments. Enter the information for the control page and the variation page. You will then receive a code to embed on each page. Go ahead and add the code snippets to their respective pages.

Save your changes and publish out your pages in order to verify in the next step.

Lastly, send traffic to your control page. To do this, click Start Experiment to begin testing. Some of your visitors will see your variation page instead which Google will collect data from, thus enabling you to analyze the results. Give your tests at least two weeks for the collection of results and keep an eye on which pages are performing better in your Google Analytics Dashboard.

Tip: making small variations and minor changes gives you the opportunity to isolate and pinpoint what your audience responds better to within your donation forms. It may be a variation in color that creates stronger conversion, or it may be a change in text. Analyze the data from your Google Analytics Dashboard and make changes to your donation forms accordingly.