5 Challenges to Overcome When Starting a Testing Program
By Kevin Plankey
March 8, 2023
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If you’ve determined that you need an A/B testing and optimization program, but feel overwhelmed about where to start, let this article guide you through the five essential roadblocks you might face and how to overcome them.
1. It is unclear how visitors interact with your site.
No matter where you are in the A/B testing journey, if you don’t understand how visitors interact with your digital properties, you cannot effectively optimize the user experience. The first step to achieving the benefits of A/B testing and site optimization includes collecting and organizing existing visitor data, taking an inventory of your digital properties, including your websites and mobile apps, and then taking a deep dive into understanding how visitors experience your digital and other channels, including where they stumble or drop off, because looking for weak areas is really how you can identify areas for testing.
2. I know what I need to improve, but how do I choose the right first A/B test?
First and foremost, you need to assess the effort required and hypothesize its potential impact. I would suggest starting with an A/B test that is easy to implement and with a small to moderate expected impact, versus one that is difficult to implement and has a very high potential impact. The idea here is to scale up – essentially crawl before you run – but also continually iterate. The effects of optimizing your website or mobile app will snowball as you learn more about what works and what doesn’t.
3. You have this great plan, but you don’t have any available developer resources.
You don’t need the expertise of a developer to create and run A/B tests. Any member of your A/B testing team can experiment with campaigns and run A/B tests through a visual editor with no coding required. If you can drag and drop and you have a plan, then you have enough to get going.
4. Oops, my data looks inaccurate.
When you’re optimizing your site, the quality of data is crucial and must be constantly monitored so you can catch poor-performing campaigns without any lag time. It’s crucial that your data is accurate and immediately actionable. After all, better data equals better decisions. With the right data your A/B testing strategy will flourish. SiteSpect is the only optimization solution not affected by browser privacy changes. Every JavaScript-based solution will lose visibility into the cookies used to track users and behavior.
5. Yeah, my data is good, and I have a winning campaign, but now what?
What do you do when you discover a winning campaign? You can start by pushing your winning changes live through your testing platform while you determine your next steps, which might include re-testing on new segments, identifying further areas to optimize, or adding these changes to your web development queue. Once you’ve set up a smooth A/B testing process – test and repeat – you must make sure that it stays running.
So now that you’ve addressed these five challenges, you should feel more confident in starting a testing program. If you’re looking to scale your testing program download our ebook: Choosing an Optimization Platform. Learn how to assess your current experimentation tool and key questions to ask prospective optimization providers.
To speak to an experimentation expert or to see product demo, click here. It will be time well spent!
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