What is a cost-effective way to improve essential KPIs impacting your organization’s or brand’s growth? A/B testing. Check out the ultimate guide & tutorial for AB testing and the best infographic to improve the essential KPIs of your business.
What is an A/B Test?
A/B testing is the study of the relationship between independent variables and dependent variables. For example, let’s say you were curious if the color of your webpage font was impacting your conversion rate. You can test this.
The practice of showing two variants of the same webpage to different segments of website visitors simultaneously and comparing which variation drives more conversions.
The one that gives higher conversions wins!
What to investigate? AB Testing Tutorial and Guide
Your selection of what to investigate will be predicated on your intended goals.
For example, if your objective is to increase the number of sign-ups, you would conduct tests on the following: the length of the sign-up form, the variety of fields in the record, the display of privacy policy, the term “social proof,” etc. In this instance, the purpose of A/B testing is to determine what prevents visitors from signing up. Is the length of the form daunting?
Are visitors concerned with their privacy? Or is the website ineffective at convincing visitors to register? All of these issues can be addressed separately by testing the appropriate components of websites.
Even though every A/B test is different, specific components are typically evaluated: Understand more about the AB testing guide.
- The call to action’s (i.e., the button’s) wording, size, color, and placement,
- Headline or product description,
- The length of the form and the different types of fields,
- The layout and design of the website,
- Pricing and promotional tactics for products,
- Images on takeoff and product pages,
- The volume of text on the page (short vs. long).
How Do I Run the Test?
You may have run an A/B test before and not have even known it! Have you ever sent two identical emails to someone and changed only one variable in the email?
Create a variation based on your hypothesis, and A/B test it against the existing version. Calculate the test duration keeping in mind your monthly visitors, current conversion rate, and the expected change in the conversion rate.
Questions to consider before undertaking an A/B test
Because of the large number of resources required and the potentially significant impact on decisions, it’s crucial to ask yourself questions about the product, the engineering teams, and other stakeholders involved in the experiment before attempting the AB testing guide.
- What is the appearance of the sample population, and what are the target customer segments for the intended product?
- Can we find the answer to our business question through exploratory/historical data analysis (e.g. (The procedure of) analyzing causes?
- Will we attempt to test one or multiple variants of the intended product?
- Can we ensure that the groups in control and experimental arms are truly randomized? Are both samples representative of the actual population of users?
- Can we guarantee the durability of the treatment and control groups during the entire duration of the experiment?
The advantages of AB testing: Guide
- It facilitates the acquisition of knowledge about what works and what doesn’t in a rapid manner.
- You receive feedback directly from consumers of the product itself.
- Because the users aren’t aware of the testing, the results will be objective.
The negative aspects of A/B testing
- Firstly, Differentiating content, price, and features for different customers in the same geographic region may threaten the business, resulting in Change Aversion (this will be discussed in greater detail later).
- Secondly, It’s demanding to dedicate a lot of resources to Product, Engineering, and Data Science.
- Finally, Incorrect conclusions can be present if not done with care.
That’s AB testing: Best Guide
An A/B test starts with the altering of a single variable, like the color of the font, the style of a font, etc. Once you’ve set up your tests, all you have to do is study the data from each test to see which test performs better:
A, or B. For example, you want to test how your audience perceives an image on your website.
To conduct an A/B test, you would use two images on your website to see which image your audience responds better to. Review the AB testing infographic below.
You know your hypothesis is true if test B performs better than test A. But if test A, the controlled test, performs better than test B, the changed variable, you’d have the data to conclude that your hypothesis was false.
To better understand A/B tests, see the infographic below, brought to you by Digital: Check out the ultimate guide & tutorial for AB testing and the best infographic to improve the essential KPIs of your business.