A/B Testing Implementation

A/B testing is one of the most popular and powerful instruments of marketing which can help to boost the performance of any website.

Conducting experiments will help you to directly influence the main indicators of necessary performance, among which are the following:

• Conversion rate;
• Number of rejections;
• Average time spent per visit;
• Engagement rate.

The Purpose of A/B Testing

The main task of such testing – checking a range of test pages where you must reach a particular target. In other words, the purpose of A/B testing lies in choosing the favorite variant which will increase the target.

After studying the basic of A/B testing, everyone starts to establish working groups and check the web pages. Eventually, this does not lead to expected results and will be just a waste a time.

Performing A/B testing is not so easy. But almost every optimizer seeks how to improve the results with the minimum efforts.

Let’s start with the most evident. The best way to decrease the costs of A/B testing does not mean to avoid difficult ways and decisions. If you are striving to improve the results not wanting to make big efforts – work less but more efficiently.

Next, we will tell how to reach the optimized result with the least costs and also will distinguish some instruments which actively help us in doing this.

Lesson No. 1. Don’t Make Fast Conclusions

The process of performing the A/B testing will be a waste of time if you will make the conclusions very fast and use very small target audience. In this case, one popular empirical rule is very suitable ­– you must not make conclusions and change the strategy until the moment you reach 1000 views (the exact number still depends on the size of your product).

1000 is a classical minimum. But if your product attracts much more users, this number must be increased.

You should not make a conclusion if a target market is very small and not much time has passed after testing as the quality and efficiency of the test depends on its duration. Try to perform test minimum for 1 week so you will get the most accurate average indicators which are not determined by possible decline and rise of statistical information of web resource (on a daily and a weekly basis).

As you can see from the picture, a quite big difference in conclusions may happen during 1 day, 7 days and month.

Don’t Make Fast Conclusions

Lesson No 2. Find Your Target Market

For example, we have a certain statistics which indicates that the best time to post something on Twitter and Facebook is after 12. Before writing outcome indicators which indicate that this particular time is final, try to analyze where these facts came from? From which country or region? Maybe this information must not be used for your project specifications.

One more example. The best time for drip marketing is 1 hour before the workday starts or just after it ends. But this deals only with B2B companies so when it comes to B2C conclusions, a client is independent and individual.

Your target market can have particular geographical, age or other reasons for a social matter not to work in usual work time. Or you are interested in the category of people who are listening to the radio at this time instead of viewing their emails.

Also, don’t forget that rush hour may differ in various national cultures and time zones.

Lesson No. 3. Regularly Improve the Testing Process

Sometimes the conclusions do not depend on what exactly you are saying but how you do this. Text editing can serve as a good thing and will help to get big changes. Properly and clearly add these amendments to the test models before the end of the testing process.

And the main thing: don’t make assumptions! Numerous principles of text writing and editing, usage of lists and text delimiters can successfully work for others but they not necessarily will serve your needs. You may use the recommendations but still, every project must be unique.

Regularly Improve The Testing Process

Lesson No. 4. Complete Object Synchronization

According to studies, every object of A/B testing must be important itself but none of the elements can control the situation. Conversion of any page depends on numerous factors, one of which is complete synchronization of all tricks and ways which will lead the client exactly to this page.

Complete Object Synchronization

The clearest example is adjusting a tone and design of your advertisement to other marketing objects. Clients will subconsciously see the inconsistency and can just leave your website.

The most important lesson: getting rid of assumptions or leave your intuition behind!

Yes, intuition is the most dangerous threat to the process of A/B testing. None of the test scripts must be completed without valid reasons if you wish to get 100% right result.

Popular instruments for performing A/B testing

Nowadays there are many various services which offer A/B testing services. They can be either paid or absolutely free. The most popular are the following:

• Google Optimize – an absolutely free instrument which can help you to conduct all kinds of experiments by yourself, without any help.

Google Optimize

• Hubspot – popular specialized service which helps to solve numerous marketing tasks including the setting of efficient A/B tests. Additionally, the platform is completely integrated with Google Analytics. You can use either trial version for 1 month or activate a tariff plan.
• Unbounce – it’s also a platform with the function of integration with popular user behavior processing services: Infusionsoft CRM, Google Analytics, MailChimp. There are either trial or paid tariffs.
• Visual Websites Optimizer – will help to easily configure a split test and also count the percentage of incoming traffic. A free version allows testing the most important functionalities of the application and even to conduct research experiment.

Tips on Performing the Most Effective and Correct A/B Testing

• Proper time management between tests allows to increase the conversion of results;
• You must find stable time for performing split test what does not depend on the differences between the results;
• Use simple technic which will always give narrowly defined results;
• Theoretical training is a base for performing efficient split testing.

A/B software testing outsourcing today is the optimal solution that allows you to improve the quality of your software at a minimum cost.