AB Testing - ROI Focused Growth From Erudite Agency

A/B Testing – An Introduction

A/B testing allows us to test an optimised design against your existing one so that we can fully understand its impact and therefore the value the page brings to your business.

How Can A/B Testing Help the Performance of Our Site?

A/B testing is an iterative process that ensures you’re always learning and always adapting to where the best opportunities are.

One of the key advantages of conversion optimisation is that once a winning test is implemented, your site will continue to benefit from the optimisation each day, month and year to come.

That’s not to say that once this happens our job is done though – as seasons, promotions, products and time changes so will your traffic’s effectiveness.

It’s our job to make sure that when different variables are around, we’re putting them to work, using them to our advantage and getting your traffic converting at the best possible rate.

For an example of our CRO in practice, see our case study with Ethical Wellness pioneers Neal’s Yard Remedies

What is the Typical Process for an A/B Test?

We’ll get into this in a bit more detail later on, but for a quick overview these are the core stages:

Data Analysis: Understand your users, business and website
Hypotheses: Create hypotheses based on opportunities we’ve found in step 1
Wireframe & Design: Plan out and design the new optimisations
Build: Build the approved design using HTML, CSS and JS
Test: Truly understand how the changes impact performance
Review: If successful, deploy. If unsuccessful, learn and improve
Iterate: CRO is an iterative process, you’re never done and there’s always more improvements to be gained!

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A/B Testing the Erudite Way

Here’s a brief introduction into the core stages of the A/B testing process and why they’re important.

1. Analysis & Hypothesis

At the very core of conversion optimisation is data analysis. CRO takes a scientific approach where improvements are developed from opportunities we find in the data.

From here we form hypotheses which guide us when creating a design. A simple hypothesis may take the form of:

We know that: Due to X we’re seeing an increased exit rate from the basket page on mobile.

We think that: The user needs better signals to checkout in order to continue with their purchase rather than exit.

We’ll know by Testing: Adding a call to action above the fold on mobile and measuring exit rate and conversion rate.

2. Design & Develop

Once a hypothesis has been established it’s time for us to translate this into a design that we think will win, improving the performance of the existing page.

We follow your existing brand guidelines carefully to ensure that our new design is consistent and in-keeping. A process of sketching, wireframes and prototypes are used to develop the idea and create a production-ready design for your approval.

3. The Test

Once approved, the design gets developed in our testing tool of choice – Google Optimize. When needed we work closely with your developers so that new functionalities can be tested and all the dots are connected.

The tests typically take 2 weeks on a website that has good traffic but can take longer to ensure our results are statistically viable and we can say for sure that the winner should be deployed.

Next, it’s time to get 100% of traffic interacting with the new design so that we can capitalise on that increase in conversion rate!

4. Iteration!

You may have heard this before but CRO is an iterative process. As you’re testing you’re always learning about what works and what doesn’t for your particular users and business.

As winning tests get implemented, the baseline shifts so where we may have seen a high exit rate previously may have dropped and vice versa. This means that once a test gets implemented, we monitor and analyse its impact so that we can determine where the next best opportunity lies.

This iterative nature of CRO makes it incredibly exciting.