Your ultimate guide to effective content testing

Words matter. Whether you’re drafting content for a sales-driven email, product descriptions on your ecommerce site, or web copy as part of a landing page funnel, the words you use are important.

But—since writing is often thought to be creative and subjective—how can you bring measurable analytics and research to your copy efforts?

This is where content testing comes into play.

Content testing is how you measure the success of your messaging. In this article, we’ll share what content testing is, how it measures the success of your content, and steps to develop your own content testing exercises.

You’ll see how effective content testing can be for crafting content that resonates with your audience and helps you achieve your goals.

Content testing is a widely used method of research that helps creators learn if their targeted users can find and generally understand the content produced. You can find out if your content, in its many forms, addresses the right pain points, provides enough context, and inspires readers to follow through with a specified action.

Here are some other key advantages of content testing:

• You can use it to identify how much of your content works and doesn’t work and find out why.

• It supports how you create accessible products and experiences.

• It allows you to build an intuitive user experience.

• It simplifies how you choose effective keywords.

• You can use it to prioritize your content development initiatives.

• It enables you to hit the brakes on any “bad” content before you share it.

What content should you test?

The short answer is ALL of it.

Wherever you share content with any high-value target audience, test it first. This might include content related to your product, website copy, and even thank you prompt pages. If it’s conveying a message, it’s worth testing.

Regardless of the subject you’re talking about, your content is specific and needs to resonate with a certain audience persona.

Content testing is an important tool to have in your arsenal as it shows whether you’re connecting in a meaningful way. It’s also the best way to measure the following characteristics of your content:

Usability

Usability in content refers to how easily users can understand and engage with information. Content should be clear, concise, and focused on its purpose without unnecessary details to ensure high usability.

For example, a product description should be brief, but each word should be chosen precisely. The more you can communicate in fewer words, the better.

Readability

Most people today use their mobile devices to access their favorite content. And since they are on the go, they tend to avoid reading word for word. Instead, they skim through pieces of content, allowing their eyes to pause and register specific keywords throughout the text.

When those keywords register with the reader properly, the content is readable.

Ideally, you’ll want a reader to understand the message you’re trying to convey with one read-through, whether they are skimming through the text or diligently reading word for word.

Searchability

No one will read your content if they can’t actually find it online. This is where searchability applies in content testing.

See how easy or hard it is for your target audience to find your website or online product listings.

Search engine optimization (SEO) strategies will help you better position your content based on commonly searched terms, geographics, and competition vying for the same positioning.

Navigation

Test your content for navigability and ease of use. User experience (UX) refers to the environment in which your content lives and what a reader might experience upon landing in that environment. Usability, readability, searchability, navigation, and accessibility are all part of UX.

Ideally, you’ll want them to be able to find what they are looking for without taking too many steps (or clicks).

Accessibility

Make sure every piece of content you create is easily and readily accessible for all your target audience users.

Accessibility aids can interact with your content. For example, they might allow you to create a more inclusive product or message that everyone can understand.

Tone and voice

Content testing allows you to identify your messaging’s tone, style, and voice. Text can convey emotions that should consistently align with the voice of your brand or product.

For example, if you’re launching a new product, your tone and voice might “feel” more exciting or enthusiastic. Alternatively, if your content is about addressing a more serious customer pain point, your tone and voice might be more subdued and empathetic.

These content characteristics are key to successfully resonating with your target audience.

Lo-fi prototypes

Content testing with low-fidelity prototypes is an inexpensive way to quickly test your ideas about how to design and write your content.

Ideally, lo-fi prototypes can leverage screenshots or web pages to test which customer reading journeys work and which language resonates best.

Highlighter exercises

Your company’s content testing model might be best executed with highlighter exercises.

These tests involve a group of subjects being asked to highlight words in a body of text based on how they feel. For example, you might prompt participants to highlight words that make them feel safe in green and any words that make them feel uncertain in red.

Search term mining

With this content testing structure, you’ll use tools like Google Trends to identify trending lingo and popular phrases your target readers often use. This will inform how you draft your content, enabling you to speak the “language” of those specific users and use terms they already assign meaning to in other contexts.

Depending on your marketing or development processes, consider testing at each of the following milestones:

• Conceptualization—to understand the content framework you need

• Design—to validate existing content and make changes before committing

• Pre-launch—to optimize visuals, CTAs, and headlines for better results

• Post-launch—to measure the clarity and effectiveness of your content

Content testing isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Choose the right method based on the type of messaging you’re looking to create and analyze.

1. Task-based usability testing

Task-based usability testing involves assigning real users specific tasks and evaluating how they complete them. This type of testing enables you to identify issues that hinder the user’s experience, such as confusing language, poor navigation, or incomplete information.

2. Cloze test

This method measures how well your users understand the text through the lens of their prior knowledge and context. It involves purposely omitting words from a piece of content and prompting the participants to fill in the gaps with what they think fits best. This will tell you if your messaging supports the primary sentiment through effective context.

3. Card sorting

Card sorting involves measuring how users categorize your text. Use this method to ask participants to group ideas or concepts together in a way that makes sense to them using virtual or physical cards. This allows you to assess how your target audience understands the information you’re presenting to them.

4. Highlight test

As previously mentioned, this method of content testing gauges how your particular audience feels about the messages you’re conveying. Using a highlighter exercise, you can prompt participants to select various keywords that inspire an emotion, like happiness, anxiety, excitement, or uncertainty.

5. 5-second testing

This method is a great way to assign value to users’ first impressions of your content.

Provide participants with a design or piece of text and give them five seconds to engage with it. When the five seconds are over, ask a series of questions to see which elements or aspects of your content were quickly absorbed and understood.

6. Preference testing

In this method, you provide your participants with more than one option for design and content. Allow them to choose the option they prefer, citing what it is about their selection that makes them think or feel favorably.

This content testing method is ideal during the earlier editing phases of your content development process.

7. A/B testing

A/B testing involves presenting users with two variations of your content to assess performance based on quantifiable metrics. For example, you might measure metrics like clicks, conversions, or engagement to discover which version is most effective. You might go on to tweak the most successful variation again and use it to conduct another A/B test to further refine your content.

A/B testing is most effective later in the development process, once the product or content is live.

8. Readability testing

Use this method to analyze your text based on its ease of reading and comprehension. These tests tend to prioritize smaller words and shorter sentences, assessing what level of reading comprehension is needed for the audience to understand everything in the piece.

This method may be particularly helpful if you’re looking for simplistic language to describe how to use or apply a solution or product.

Once you have selected the best content testing method, you can move forward with executing the test itself. Below are the fundamental steps to measure your messaging:

1. Identify your goals

Start by mapping out your goals for the test. Here, you’ll identify exactly what you hope your content will achieve and create a wireframe for your tests.

2. Choose your method and create the test

With your goals in mind, choose the best-fit method of content testing.

3. Test the test

Conduct a few test runs of your chosen test method to close gaps and confirm that it’s the right process for the content you’re evaluating.

4. Gather test participants

Assemble test participants who represent your different target personas.

5. Conduct the test

Conduct your test according to its unique steps. Collect your results.

6. Analyze the results

Spend quality time reviewing the results of your content testing. Look to identify which goals were met and where your content fell short.

A team review is also helpful for spotting trends and gaps from different perspectives.

Whenever you create a piece of content, consider evaluating it through the lens of sample questions.

Build a library of questions to ask about your messaging. This will help you discern how to prioritize testing and where to make edits before testing. It will also reinforce your content goals.

Here are some sample questions you might include in your content testing library:

• Can readers or users find what they are looking for or need?

• Are you following a hub-and-spoke website architecture model?

• Is it taking too many steps to get your users where they need to be?

• Is the content accessible to everyone?

• Is the content SEO-optimized with proper formatting and keywords?

• Are you using the same easy-to-comprehend vocabulary as your target personas?

• Do your key phrases and word choices address common pain points?

• Is your copy too wordy or “fluffy”?

• Can the reader or user see exactly what they need to do next with your call to action?

Streamline your content testing with one or more of the following popular tools and software solutions:

• CrazyEgg

• Google Search Console

• Ahrefs

• Mouseflow

• SEMRush

You’re not done when you have tested your content and finalized its production. Because consumers change preferences and your products or services might resonate with different audiences over time, you’ll need to re-evaluate your content periodically.

Consider conducting content audits and repeating content testing. Depending on your business model, audits can be helpful quarterly, bi-annually, or annually.