Tips for A/B Testing

You may spend quality time in creating a successful website but might still fail to generate the desired outcome. Of course, you cannot predict whether your product will work with your target audience or not. But, such an objective can be achieved with the help of A/B Testing (also referred as Split Testing).

Performing A/B tests accurately can make a huge difference in finding out exactly which strategy for your product will work better. Put it simply, A/B Split testing help in comparing different variations of a web page of a site to help you know which one of those variations will produce the best outcome.

Basically, A/B testing helps in understanding the user behavior and boost conversion rate. Read on to explore more of A/B testing and tips that will help you carry out such testing process efficiently.

An Overview of A/B Testing

A/B split testing is like having two versions of your product (A and B) and a metric that determines which one of your version performs better. In order to figure out which version will best suit your needs, both versions are required to experiment simultaneously. And then, only pick the version that generated more favorable results.

While A/B testing can be done to determine which site variation will prove more successful in improving conversion rate, a bevy of savvy marketers are also running A/B tests to define the success of their marketing strategies.

The reason that has encouraged marketers to run A/B tests is because of the availability of tools that helps carry out those tests with little or no involvement from professionals. Also, many UX (User Experience) Designers are utilizing it due to its relatively low cost.

Let’s discuss a real life example of A/B Testing:

The ComScore team experimented their product pages on the basis of different designs, orientations, and a customer logo. They ran the test to determine whether a different visual treatment would help them convert their visitors into potential leads via their social proof. When performing A/B testing on 2,500 visitors they saw that the first variation outperformed all other variations.

It’s pretty obvious that building something based on users choice increases the chances of success. And, running A/B tests on your product variants can help you learn about which one of your variant is well-liked by the audience. Needless to say, building something that is acknowledged by your users apparently will provide a good user experience (UX).

But, have you wondered about conducting UX research to carry out A/B tests? Let’s head to the next section to get an answer to this question?

Tips For Performing A/B Tests With User Research

Bear in mind, creating product variations and then performing A/B testing on all those variations isn’t easy and can be a lot challenging. Most importantly, running random A/B tests without giving it a thought is just like “throwing darts at a board and seeing which one stick.” But, you can’t afford to waste your time in doing such a thing, as it will escalate the risk of user abandonment. And so, it is better to conduct user research if you want to deploy A/B tests effectively. To do so, follow the below-mentioned tips:

#Tip 1. Understand and Define User Purpose and Objections

Learning why users prefer visiting some environment and when they decide to leave it can play a vital role in helping you creating product variations quickly. Also, it’s imperative to understand user objections regarding something. However, assuming your visitors objections without investigation will not be a waste of your time, but can also be devastating.

For example, let’s say you believed that visitors are leaving your site because of high product prices and decide to lower them which takes a hit on your profit margin. But, what if users didn’t abandon your site because of the price? Certainly, your business will be doomed to failure because of the inability to understand your users purpose and objections.

How to find users purpose and objections? Carry out a follow-up survey that asks questions such as:

Why users prefer visiting a site?

Is your user able to find what they have been looking for? If not, then why?

#Tip 2. Try to Figure Out Issues With the Interface

Another excellent approach to creating effective product variations is to make it as useful as you can. This requires building a good interface. But, merely focusing on the interface design and not paying due attention to usability problems such as misunderstanding cues, etc. won’t help improve conversion despite performing A/B testing.

For instance, creating a variation of a form for your site that asks users to sign-up additional fields, and running an A/B test to figure out if changing the size of the ‘Submit’ button boost the conversion rate will be a waste of your efforts. Essentially, finding out the main cause of low conversion is crucial for carrying out the A/B test experiments successfully.

How can you find interface issues? This can be accomplished by performing Usability testing. According to an online report, usability testing help finds 85 percent of the user interface problems.

# Tip 3. Fix Everything in Your Design Variations Before Making it Live

And at last, ensure that your design variations are fixed and do not contain any stumbling blocks that could result in bugs later.

How to fix your design variations/variants? Before making your design variants available for public use, perform simple tests to see if there is any troubling element in your design. And then, clean up your design by removing any stumbling block. To run A/B test experiments on all your variations in an efficient manner, it makes sense to resolve any by usability problems that prevent users from making the best possible use of each variant of your design. So, clean up the variations to render a relevant and meaningful user experience.

Wrapping Up

Though, A/B testing tends to be a useful tool for finding out the right product variant that your target audience may like. But, an unfortunate reality is that some people do not make the correct use of A/B tests. However, you can get better outcomes of A/B tests by conducting user research to identify more (and right) opportunities to carry out the A/B tests experimentation in a successful way. For this, you must take into consideration all of the tips above.