What is digital content testing?

From retailers to corporate organizations, to small and mid-sized companies, – everyone today wants a share of the online content pie. As the result, the online space is crowded with millions of websites clamoring for attention. There is a need to stand out from the crowd and digital content helps to achieve just that. Content is your representative online that engages with your audience, build trust and enables successful business outcomes.

Online media has also shifted power to the customer, driving businesses to offer customer-centric experiences to remain relevant. And customers will be loyal if they perceive you as a genuine brand offering the best products and services and following ethical practices at all times. Digital content in the form of text, videos, audio files, graphics, podcasts, webinars, blogs, social media posts and infographics is a means to connect and bond with your audience.

Also Read: 9 Reasons Why You Should Adopt Digital Content Testing

Here’s why businesses should opt for digital content testing-

With so much at stake, digital content testing becomes a must for your business. As the name suggests, digital content testing refers to the testing of all online content to ensure an optimal user experience. Customers are fickle – one small mistake and a few clicks of a mouse are all it takes to shift loyalties to your competitor. In the highly competitive online arena, it becomes important to adopt a systematic approach to testing digital content to reach and retain customers.

As said above, digital content is a means to engage with the audience, address all their queries, set all doubts to rest and finally, direct them to take action. This said, even as businesses create data-driven content based on customer attitude and behavior, it is difficult to gauge which messaging hits the bullseye. Or for the matter, which form of content, that is, audio, demo video, infographics, or email campaigns works best with the audience?

With the best tracking, analytics and reporting, brands may still fail to correctly interpret human behavior. Further, the behavior is constantly evolving, implying that the messaging that worked yesterday may not be relevant today. There is therefore, the constant need to monitor and test digital content to understand what your audience wants and how they react to the messages you promote. Digital content testing is a scientific approach to creating content that best resonates with your audience.

Types of digital content testing strategies

Digital Media Testing

Digital media provides businesses with effective and affordable means to test digital content with specific audiences. You may have rolled out an ad campaign to promote your products or services. Here is how to conduct digital media testing.

• First, set aside some budget for digital content testing. The minor amount spent on testing will ensure that your larger amount of budget on running the ad campaign provides full value for money.
• Determine the section of digital copies that you wish to test within your digital content testing strategy. For instance, you want to test a product against a lifestyle copy.
• The next step is to define an audience to test your digital content. The audience can be your social media followers, subscribers to a blog or newsletter, or members of your mailing list. Based on the number of creative copies you have, divide the audience into smaller groups and ensure that each user sees only one version of the ad. Use audience feedback to understand which digital content showed the best performance based on select variables. Apart from the creatives themselves, digital content testing will also provide insights into details such as color, font size, placement of call to actions, eye movement across the content etc.

Digital content testing will help you gain insights into various aspects of your digital content. With this data in hand, you can identify the best ad creative to achieve maximum impact.

Tracking and Analytics

You may also conduct digital content testing of your website content. For instance, data tracking, reporting and analytics help you trace audience behavior on various pages of your website. You can gauge which page attracts the maximum eyeballs depending on the number of page visits and the time spent on it. You can use data to reimagine your content, for instance, shift from long paragraphs to bullet points, accompany step-by-step text instructions with demo videos etc. Data-driven testing of audience behavior helps you to tailor customer-centric content and activities.

Questionnaires and Surveys

The third strategy to test the effectiveness of digital content is surveys. You may ask your existing customers to take a short survey to gauge their reaction to your online content across platforms such as websites, blogs, and social media. To ensure greater participation in the survey, you can also offer some sort of rewards, for instance, a discount or cashback on the next purchase.  Design the survey to test digital content on various metrics such as creativity, content format, and presentation. You can then modify content on the responses.

In conclusion

The role of content in the online environment cannot be overstated. Digital content is the face of your brand, it is your ability to engage the audience and turn them into loyal clients or customers. In any traditional setting, your human resources are at hand to support the customer in the engagement journey and identify and rectify any errors along the way. However, in the online space, even with the best strategies it is very difficult to completely predict and respond to customer behavior. Digital content is one of the primary means to engage with the audience and keep them hooked and loyal to the business. It is therefore very important to ensure that it is updated and engaging at all times. 

Attracting qualified leads, keeping the audience engaged, and changing perceptions is a laborious and time-consuming task. To build and sustain momentum, it is important to test your content. Digital content testing helps you to gain valuable insights about your customers, your products or services, your brand, and, of course, the content. Based on these insights, you can reimagine your approach to content and also save costs on delays, lack of productivity, or extra communications. Leveraging customer data, multichannel analytics, survey mechanisms, and search analytics, digital content testing empowers you to understand what content works and what doesn’t with your customers.

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