What is A/B Testing?
A/B testing, also known as split testing, is a simple way to test changes to your page against the current design and determine which ones produce positive results.
It takes the guesswork out of website optimization. By testing your changes before implementing them you get quantitative answers about what modifications create positive results. By constantly testing and optimizing your page you can increase revenue, donations, leads, signups, downloads, or whatever else your goal may be.
In a nutshell, here's how it works:
How it works, a detailed look:
A/B testing involves testing several different versions of a web page with live traffic and then measuring the effect each version has on your conversion rates. Imagine a company, Acme Widgets, that operates a web store selling widgets. Visitors to their site are presented with a "Buy" button on each widget details page, which leads to a purchase funnel ending with a confirmation page:
Acme's head of marketing decides that she'd like to test several different colors for the "Buy" button. She uses Optimizely to display a different button randomly to each incoming user:
Optimizely measures the number of visitors who saw each version of the button and then clicked it. It also measures the number of visitors who completed the purchase funnel and landed on the "Thank You" confirmation page. In this case, Acme's head of marketing determined that using the red "Buy" button would likely result in the largest uplift in conversion rate, so Acme then redesigns their product detail pages accordingly.
