Thrive Optimize Review: Will It Finally Get You To Split Test?

As the marketing world continues to evolve, companies are continuing to make optimization easier for everyone. New tools are making it simpler for a new solopreneur to monitor and tweak their campaigns to make them profitable.

This is especially true when it comes to split testing, and the recently released Thrive Optimize plugin is designed to be one of the most user-friendly pieces of A/B testing software on the market.

Studies show that A/B testing is now the second most popular CRO (conversion rate optimization) method after customer journey analysis.

But while 71% of companies are doing more than 2 tests per month, less than half are actually using any sort of split testing software.

A/B Testing is critical to optimizing the performance of your landing pages. It helps you make some difficult marketing decisions without relying solely on your gut.  Thrive Optimize allows you to easily create these tests and monitor the results in real-time.

In this Thrive Optimize review, we’ll take a look at how the plugin works and see if you should start using it in your business.

What is Thrive Optimize?

Thrive Optimize is an add-on plugin that sits on top of Thrive Architect and gives it split testing capabilities. Once installed, you can create split tests which allow you to create 2 (or more) variations of a particular page. The plugin will then randomly route your website traffic to each landing page variation, letting them compete against each other and telling you which one works best.

To determine which worked best depends on your chosen conversion goal. This could be someone signing up for your list, visiting a page on your site, or purchasing a product.

Thrive Optimize is not a standalone plugin that can work on its own.  Instead, it works in conjunction with Thrive Architect, which is a page builder that lets you design rich looking landing pages for Wordpress.

To get it, you will either have to be a Thrive Themes member (which gives you access to all their products) or purchase a standalone license that gives you access to both products.

How Do You Set Up a Split A/B Test With Thrive Optimize?

Using Thrive Optimize is fairly simple.  Especially if you are already comfortable using Thrive Architect to design your landing pages.

Here’s how to get started:

Step 1: Create a landing page using Thrive Architect.

Step 2: Press the Create New A/B test button in the top-right corner of the page.

Step 3: You can easily duplicate your current landing page by clicking the clone icon on the top right of the control variation.  Or you can click the Add new variation button to create a new landing page from scratch.

While I recommend split testing with 2 variations in most cases for best results, Thrive Optimize does allow you to add as many variations as you want into the split test.

The sliders at the bottom of each variation allow you to control what percentage of the overall traffic gets sent to each page.

Step 4: Click Edit Variation to make your desired changes to each variation.  Suggested things to test include your headlines, body copy, colors and call to action buttons.

Step 5: Once all your variations are setup, press Setup & Start A/B test on the top right of the page.  This will pop up a dialog where you’ll be able to name your split test and choose whether to enable Automatic winner settings.

So instead of manually choosing a winner yourself, the automatic winner settings let you configure how Thrive Optimize will choose a split test winner for you.

Just set the minimum number of conversions, testing days and percentage improvements you need to see before a winner is determined.

Step 6: On the next page of the dialog, you will then set the goal of your split test. This is how Thrive Optimize determines what a conversion will be.

You can choose between Revenue, Visiting a Goal Page and Subscription.  Revenue and Visit Goal pages work similarly.  Both allow you to specify an internal page on your site as a goal page.   The only difference is that when choosing Revenue as your goal, you would also input a specific dollar value for that page.

The subscriptions goal will track how many leads each variation gets from the optin form on your landing page.

Step 7: Finally to start the split test, click the green “Set Up & Start A/B Test” button at the bottom, right-hand side of the page.

How quickly you will see your results will depend on how much traffic your website generally gets. So try to be patient as this could take a few days (or weeks) to collect enough data to be meaningful.

Anytime you want to check up on the statistics, you can visit the Thrive Optimize dashboard. This gives you real-time info to see how the split test is progressing.

For even more detailed stats click on View Test Details to get more in-depth information on how your test is doing.

Once the ‘automatic winner’ is triggered or you manually call a winning page, the A/B test is complete. Your winning page variation will become your main landing page and the other variations will automatically become disabled.

Why should you use Thrive Optimize?

If you’re using Thrive Architect at all to build landing pages, then it’s a no-brainer to use Thrive Optimize at well.  It basically adds one click split testing to any Thrive landing page you make and it’s extremely easy to use.

Especially if you are doing any sort of paid advertising where improving your conversion rate just a little bit can be the difference between a profitable and failed campaign.

You can use it to split test both small changes like headlines, colors or call to actions.  Or completely different landing pages against each other.  All while leveraging the familiar Thrive Architect interface you are used to.

I really like the automatic winner feature that’s part of Thrive Optimize.  When you use products like this, it can take awhile to get any meaningful results.  And sometimes you just forget about it if it’s too far out in the future.

By leveraging the automatic winner setting, I can have my split tests run on autopilot, with no intervention on my part.  Once my tests have reached statistical significance, it will automatically just start using the best landing page.

Why should you not use Thrive Optimize?

While Thrive Optimize works seamlessly with Thrive Architect landing pages, it won’t work for people who want to use it in other contexts.

So that means it definitely won’t work in non-Wordpress platforms like Drupal, Wix or Squarespace.

But it’s also curious that it won’t work on blog posts as well. Which is kind of weird because Thrive Architect itself does work on both posts and pages.

Lastly, one other minor limitation of Thrive Optimize is that you can’t use external links as a conversion goal.  So if you were wanting to see how well your landing page does at converting certain affiliate links then you are out of luck.

Thrive Optimize Pricing

If you are an existing Thrive Themes member, then Thrive Optimize is automatically available for you to download as part of your membership.

However, if you are not a member and just want to buy the product standalone, then you have a couple of options.

First, you can buy it bundled together with Thrive Architect.  This will cost you $127 for a 1 site license and $177 for a 5 site license.

If you already own Thrive Architect, then you can purchase Thrive Optimize separately as well.  This will cost you $67 for a 1 site license and $97 for the 5 site license.

Final Thoughts

Split testing is something all successful marketers should be doing and it can really take your business to the next level if done correctly. But most people don’t do it because it’s too much of a hassle and expensive.

Thrive Optimize solves this by being extremely easy to use.  It adds one-click split testing capabilities and its automatic winner feature makes split testing almost hands-free.

If you’re currently using Thrive Architect to build landing pages, then using Thrive Optimize should definitely be added to your toolbox.

Start split testing with Thrive Optimize Today