A/B testing as a tool to improve site usability
Site usability and an intuitive interface play an important role in increasing sales and improving the resource’s position in search results. To find out what consumers need, A/B testing is used. Respondents are presented with two versions of the interface and are asked to compare which is more convenient.
A quick guide to conducting A/B testing:
- establish a hypothesis, i.e. that changing a particular element will help improve the use of the page or site;
- determine the parameters that will be included in the analysis, such as conversion, number of clicks;
- select the metrics and systems to evaluate;
- testing, which takes 10 to 14 days;
- collect and analyze results.
Only one parameter is used for analysis, otherwise, the reliability of the test is significantly reduced. The more indicators are involved in the evaluation, the more difficult it is to understand which of them influenced the result.
A/B testing is suitable for testing any element of the site, such as titles, text content, block arrangement, and others.
In most cases, experts use this method to improve usability, personalize communication with users, and increase conversions. Testing is great when you need to change the current system to meet the needs of the target audience, make adjustments and test their effectiveness
One advantage of this approach is that the number of sales will not change significantly during the testing period. The fact is that some of the respondents see the old version of the site and some see the new version.
The standard period of the analysis is 10-14 days. For the first 7 days, experts are just observing the process, there will be no major changes as users get used to the innovations. At the same time, you should pay attention to the metrics, because it happens that one of them shows the result, and the other does not.
After 14 days, you must check the validity of the test using special calculators. These calculators evaluate the purity of the experiment according to the sample size and the result obtained.
A/B testing is used for email newsletters, it allows you to evaluate the quality of content and find out which emails are read more often by users. In the process of analysis, it is possible to determine the optimal position for a call to action, to see the correlation between the opening of the mailing and the time of sending.
A/B testing belongs to the category of t-tests – methods of testing hypotheses based on statistical parameters. It is an effective and popular tool for various categories of specialists. However, you should understand that a single study is not enough to get the most reliable result. It is better to perform 2-3 identical tests and only then make changes.
