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One of the most powerful (and beautiful) things about A/B testing is that it works for companies of all sizes and industries. A/B testing is basically a way to compare two versions of something to see which one performs better. It has evolved over time, particularly in terms of the contexts in which it is applied – and the ability to apply it in live digital environments today makes A/B testing very powerful and useful.
As a marketer in an eCommerce startup, you can use A/B testing in many important ways. For your core marketing efforts, you can test text, actual advertising, or email marketing. Of course, you can also test subject lines or even send times to see which strategies get you the highest open and conversion rates.
In the context of your website, you can use A/B testing to optimize your product pages, including product descriptions, images, and layout designs. You can also use it to determine the best checkout flow and process. Finally, you can use it to determine which calls to action (“CTAs”) – to buy, learn more, or get a discount – get the best results.
Although A/B testing is a powerful tool, it can often be misapplied. Let’s look at four important things an eCommerce marketer should pay attention to.
Related: 4 Ways to Get the Most Out of A/B Testing Immediately
1. Don’t ignore segmentation
Focusing solely on the impact your experiment will have on the average of a business metric can produce misleading results. This assumes that all of your users behave similarly and overlooks the fact that there are likely different user segments that behave differently. If your A/B test shows that introducing a particular new feature increases spend per user, it may be obscuring the fact that this may only be true for a few heavy users of your product and not the majority.
You need to be aware of your individual customer segments. For example, different types of users would have different average spending. You also have to be very aware if you have a global product. Customers may have different levels of digital access (fast and reliable Internet connections on the one hand and slow and unstable connections on the other) or access the Internet differently (more people access the Internet on mobile devices than on desktop computers). This affects how accessible a change made to your website is to different users and therefore impacts its success.
Segment-level personalization allows you to provide a personalized experience to specific segments. For example, you could show a specific promotion or offer to those interested in purchasing condiments and a different offer to those interested in frozen meat. Instead of finding the one version that works best for everyone, this approach allows you to identify the version that works best for each of your target audiences.
2. Run your tests over a sufficiently long period of time
You need to run the A/B test long enough to get statistically significant data. But if you reach statistical significance within, say, three to four days, that doesn’t mean you can afford to turn off your test. You want the test to run over a long enough period of time to account for seasonality or early outperformance. Ideally, you should A/B test for at least two weeks – this will help account for any differences in behavior depending on the day of the week.
If your test group performs better than the control group for a homepage CTA in the first two days, it is important to give this test more time, as such outperformance may not reflect performance over a longer period of time. This is because the audience that accessed your homepage in those two days may not represent all of your customers and their usual behavior.
Related: Experimentation and A/B Testing: An Essential Ecommerce Growth Strategy
3. Be careful when testing too many items
Sometimes startups test too many variables at once. If you do this, you won’t be able to isolate which element was the cause of your results in an A/B test. Testing multiple items at once is called multivariate testing. This also requires much more data to be statistically significant. This can be quite a challenge for a startup.
A/B testing is easier, more practical and more efficient. If you want to make good use of A/B testing to test multiple aspects at once, you need to create multiple variants for each aspect. This makes the entire process slower and your eCommerce website has to attract significantly more traffic to achieve statistically significant results. Be careful what you test for and make sure you run your tests correctly.
4. Don’t ignore external factors
There may be factors beyond your control that have a measurable impact on your business and therefore on your A/B test. Some of these factors may include seasonal fluctuations or even competitive strategies that affect your customers’ behavior. For example, if you run a test during a busy holiday shopping season, it is likely that you will see high conversion rates, but these rates will not be sustainable throughout the year. Therefore, you need to ensure that you test during normal business cycles and effectively use control groups to isolate the impact of test changes from such external factors.
Although A/B testing is a powerful tool, executing it properly is crucial. By avoiding these common pitfalls, you can leverage the full spectrum of its benefits for eCommerce success.
Related: Why Your A/B Testing Approach Is Costing You Sales