A/B Testing: Structure, Techniques, And Advantages
Structure and Due Dates
In the field of computer technology, the A/B testing could be defined as some form of split-run testing or bucket tests. These are a form of a series of randomized conduction of experiment within two variants of the same software processes or any other kinds of computational processes. This testing involves the applications based on statistical form of hypothesis testing that are widely being used within the statistical field (Jorgensen 2013). A/B testing is also defined as the ways in which two versions of a single variable would be typically tested. This testing would be mainly performed based on the response of a subject to variant A against variant B. this process would be able to determine that the two variants would be effective.
This form of testing could also be defined as an online tactic of marketing in which2 different versions of a product are used to check the preferences of a customer. This is a simple and easy way for companies in order to check the reaction of the customers. The A/B testing has been seen as to bring several form of changes within philosophy and enhancing the strategies of business in some ways. It can also be seen as a form of philosophy where the development processes would shift towards evidence based practices (Bérard et al. 2013).
Comparing of Web Pages – The A/B testing, which is also known as split testing is one of the ways in which two versions of a webpage would be compared in order to see and detect the performance of the webpages. This process proceeds with the comparison of two web pages by showing them to two variants to the similar visitors at the same instance of time. Based on the comparison, some of the users would be able to tell about the best webpage and hence the operation of testing would be found to be successful.
A/B testing allows the users to ensure the traffic to a certain webpage. Though the costs of the acquiring of paid traffic would be huge, hence the costs of the increasing number of conversions would be minimal. There are certain areas within a certain website, which might be able to gain the attraction of the visitor. Hence the concerned areas that needs to be tested are headlines, paragraph test, sub headlines, call to action button and text, images, links, social proof, media mentions and many others (Hannak et al. 2013).
Introduction to A/B Testing
Advantages and Disadvantages of A/B Testing – The advantages of A/B testing are that this form of testing would be helpful in gaining a clearer insight of a certain webpage. This evidence would be based on real behavior of a certain webpage or software. A/B testing would be able to prove the authenticity of hard proof of any form of innovative idea based on the development of any form of software.
The disadvantages of A/B testing are that this form of testing would incur severe forms of resources and would be time consuming. The setting up of the entire A/B testing system is a matter of higher amount of resources. On the agreement upon a certain set of variables, the coders and designers would be able to effectively work upon the information. This kind of testing is possible only upon a certain test case.
Multivariate Testing – This form of testing could be defined as the testing of a certain hypothesis where the several number of variables would be modified. The main purpose of multivariate testing would be able to determine some form of combination based on the performed variations to determine the best possibilities (Johnson 2013).
Mobile applications and webpages are comprised of various combinations of changeable elements. The process of multivariate testing would be helpful for changing the multiple elements such as bringing the change within headlines and pictures at the same point of time. In this form of testing, three different variations of the image and two different variations of headlines are mixed and combined in order to create six different versions of the same content. These are tested parallel in order to detect the winning variation (Marcoulides and Hershberger 2014).
The specific form of comparisons that would be needed to be made are:
- Testing of Buttons- This form of comparison between two different variants of the same webpage would prove to be highly essential. The value of the content would be highly essential as this would gain the attraction of the visitors of the webpage. This would not only be able to help to help for adjusting the shape of the buttons, size, color and position but also improve the contents of the text.
- Testing of Forms– Forms are an essential part of any webpage. Hence, the designing of the forms in an attractive and efficient manner would prove to be highly crucial for gaining the attention of the visitors.
Google Analytics ‘Experiments’ is one of the A/B testing platform. This tool allows for the splitting up of the test at up to 10 different versions within a single page that would be delivered to users based on a separate URL. Different web pages can be compared based on the performance of different sample of users (Barba et al. 2013).
Adobe Target is also an A/B testing tool that is mainly used for the creation of personalized form of web experiences. It would help in A/B tests and would thus be able to target the content in a confident manner.
Conversion funnel is one of the path taken by a website visitor before the making of purchases from the website. The processes of conversion funnels could start from a simple online search to the process of navigation throughout the entire website (Clow 2013). A typical form of conversion funnel would include the addition of the selected products within the shopping cart of the customer, the process of filing or registering the contact details of the customer and thus enabling them to complete the payment procedure.
This is the entire process by which a customer would be able to browse through the entire webpage in order to purchase their products. Google Analytics is one such tool that is mainly used within the processes of conversion funnel (Abbasi, Lau and Brown 2015).
Based on the above discussion, it could be concluded that the A/B testing is an important aspect of every website that needs to be taken into consideration. This form of testing is highly essential for improving the interactivity of the certain webpage and thus enhancing the customer viewing experience.
References
Abbasi, A., Lau, R.Y. and Brown, D.E., 2015. Predicting behavior. IEEE Intelligent Systems, 30(3), pp.35-43.
Barba, I., Cassidy, R., De Leon, E. and Williams, B.J., 2013. Web analytics reveal user behavior: TTU Libraries’ experience with Google Analytics. Journal of Web Librarianship, 7(4), pp.389-400.
Bérard, B., Bidoit, M., Finkel, A., Laroussinie, F., Petit, A., Petrucci, L. and Schnoebelen, P., 2013. Systems and software verification: model-checking techniques and tools. Springer Science & Business Media.
Clow, D., 2013, April. MOOCs and the funnel of participation. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (pp. 185-189). ACM.
Hannak, A., Sapiezynski, P., Molavi Kakhki, A., Krishnamurthy, B., Lazer, D., Mislove, A. and Wilson, C., 2013, May. Measuring personalization of web search. In Proceedings of the 22nd international conference on World Wide Web (pp. 527-538). ACM.
Johnson, M.E., 2013. Multivariate statistical simulation: A guide to selecting and generating continuous multivariate distributions. John Wiley & Sons.
Jorgensen, P.C., 2013. Software testing: a craftsman’s approach. Auerbach Publications.
Marcoulides, G.A. and Hershberger, S.L., 2014. Multivariate statistical methods: A first course. Psychology Press.