Being an initial stage entrepreneur or an established brand owner, you must understand the term “A/B Testing.” You may have used your brand strategy to enhance your product or service sales and performance. A/B testing is a comprehensive method evolving with multiplying technology and business operation methodologies.
Many claims that it has an average impact on their business strategy but a large section claims that A/B testing is a game changer if applied in the correct order while choosing the appropriate product positioning. It significantly increases conversions on a landing page and boosts brand visibility.
Below I have covered or almost tried to cover everything related to A/B testing. I hope you will find it informative and valuable!
A/B Test – Abbreviation!
A/B testing, primarily split testing or bucket testing, is unified method testers use to compare two versions of a mobile app or webpage against each other to define the better one. Running an A/B test leads you to an end-to-end comparison between two variations (Old and new) and helps you focus on questions about essential changes to your website or app. A/B test plays a vital role in improving the marketing campaign performance and better understanding what matters the most for your target audience. Moreover, it helps you answer critical business questions. It also helps you generate high-end revenue from user traffic and sets a solid foundation for a data-informed marketing strategy.
What’s A/B/n Testing?
A/B/n testing differs from multivariate testing, which also involves various testing variants. A/B/n testing lets you test multiple elements, such as A/B testing for UX or split testing for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A/B/n test shares the same goal as A/B testing: determining which combination performs best. Implying A/B/n testing, you can test a wide section of variants against the control. So, against the 50% of visitors to the control and 50% of visitors to the variant, you can show 25% of visitors to the control, 25% each to the first, second, and third variants.
A/B Testing Work Cycle:
A streamlined A/B testing process starts with taking a webpage or app screen (first version) and modifying it to create a second version for the same. It’s a simple changing process of redesigning a single headline, button, or complete page. Then, half of your traffic shows your page’s original version (known as the control), and the other half shows the modified version (the variation).
Now it’s time for user feedback regarding the web or app performance. Here, the organization allows the visitors to use either the control or variation. Based on their experience with each variation, the statistical team collects the measured data in a dashboard and later analyses it through a statistical engine. Once you get the analysis reports, it’s up to you whether you want to modify any prospects according to users’ feedback.
What should you A/B test and why?
The “What” has many answers but focuses on only essential prospects. The A/B testing has no boundaries, and one can run 1000 tests, if required, based on their website or app data. So instead of going deeper, let’s have a look at some mostly done A/B testing by professionals regarding their website or app:
Technical Analysis – It’s about running a survey and collecting data, like how the website or app works on different devices. How’s the platform’s loading speed on various screens, and what are the use case hindrances? You must collect that info and start running tests to check the issues. Remember, it could convert better if your site works correctly and quickly.
User Testing – You are familiar with this term in A/B testing, aren’t you?User testing is where you interact with realpeople who perform tasks on your site in a paid, controlled experiment. While performing these tasks, those users explain their thoughts and actions more clearly.
Analytics Analysis – Do you know what Analytics is? Another human development tool that helps admin get insights into their service and products. So it might catch any bugs or error which leads them to fault data and reports. Such things happen with technology. So, Analytics analysis is nothing but figuring out your visitors’ overall actions regarding your products and services.
Customers Surveys – Full-fledged surveys that showcase how many people have already made a purchase (as opposed to regular customers/visitors). It involves defining your customers, their problems, buying hesitations, and identifying words and phrases they use to describe your store.
On-site Surveys – Anon-site survey is like a pop-up window that asks visitors who have been on the same page of your website for a while whether anything is holding them back from making a purchase. If so, then what is it? Upon their response, you can use that information and data to solve the error and improve your copy and conversion rate.
Apart from the above list, you can choose different ways of collecting and optimizing data, but I believe no other methodology can come close to the A/B testing methodology. So maybe you should stop procrastinating with other methods and start implying A/B testing more often to get desirable results.
Now comes the essential question “WHY”?
A/B testing is an integral part of any web app development. It allows entrepreneurs and organizations to make careful changes to their user experiences while gathering valuable data on the results. It leads them to build hypotheses and conclude why some of their primary aspects of experiences impact user behavior. Sometimes, they can experience backlash.
That’s why experts always advise conducting one test at a time to determine which changes affected visitor behavior and which did not. However, with time, they can conduct multiple winning changes from different experiments to bring measurable improvement to their user base.
A/B Test setup procedure:
Collect Data – Collecting data is no rocket science. All you need to do is run an analysis and get insights into your web and apps. After doing that, you will automatically determine which area is performing well and which is underperforming. Gather both insights and optimize for improvements.
Pick out Goals – Goals in this segment have many variants. Many go behind conversions, and few clicks, and the rest only care about product sales. Here, you must choose wisely and plan accordingly regarding your priorities.
Create Hypothesis – Once you’ve identified your goal, the next is to discuss with your testing team the best possible ways to create hypotheses, in contrast, to make it better than the current version. Once you lock the process, implement them in the right direction for desirable results.
Generate Variations – Using your A/B testing software (Anything you like to use), make the necessary changes to your website or mobile app elements. It can be anything like a button’s color, swapping elements in the order of a specific page, hiding or removing navigation elements, etc.
Run Experiments – Now that you have collected valuable data, identified your goals, created a hypothesis, and generated variations, what’s stopping you from running experiments to achieve greater heights? Conduct A/B testing of various methods, allowing visitors to participate and wait for their reactions.
Analyze Results – After experiments and participants’ reactions, it’s time to analyze the results. Your A/B testing software will showcase the data from the experiment and help you determine the differences between the two versions, especially their performance. Whether you have got cover what you desired or there’s still work that needs to be done!
Following the above segments, you can create or set up a result-driven A/B testing procedure for your web and app.
Most-preferred A/B Testing Tools:
Now that you have a very brief idea about A/B testing and its essential prospects, you should pick an A/B testing tool or split testing service (most suitable to your business model and budget).
Below are some of the excellent and safe options for your consideration:
Google Optimize – If you are a beginner, Google Optimize is your best option. It’s Free with multivariate limitations and works well when performing Google Analytics A/B testing, which is encouraging.
Optimizely – If you don’t have anytechnical skills, then no issues. This one is Easy to understand and one of the most used A/B testing tools to get minor tests up and running. This tool lets you quickly analyze your A/B test results as it works completely fine even without Stats Engine. Optimizely is slightly the most expensive option of the three.
VWO – With its SmartStats and WYSIWYG editor, VWO makes analysis friendly for beginners. Every VWO plan (basic to premium) comes with on-site surveys, heatmaps, form analytics, etc.
Optimize the best A/B Testing method in your business!
Now that you have firmly understood what A/B testing is, its working cycle, and other prospects, I hope it will be easy for you to conduct A/B testing for your website and mobile app. If you have decided to do it alone, All the best to you! And if you like to perform all your A/B testing for your website and app through professionals, hire experienced A/B testers from Metizsoft Solution. We have the most dedicated and agile team of A/B testers who ensure multiple A/B testing using the most advanced tools and fix the occurring issues for better results. It’s time for you to optimize the best A/B testing method for your running business with us.
Author Bio:
Chetan Sheladiya
Founder, CEO – Metizsoft Solutions
Over a decade, Chetan Sheladiya has worked on as many as 500 unique and exciting IT projects. Running a giant Mobile App Development Company specializing in web development, mobile app development, and online business marketing, among other things, Chetan has gained immense experience and a wealth of knowledge in the technology field.