Optimization for Product Teams

A/B testing and optimization have long been for more than just marketers and ecommerce teams. But most solutions either don’t focus on optimization for product management teams or they separate their products into different interfaces for different purposes, further siloing teams and limiting the available features for each team. A/B testing, personalization, and optimization should apply across the entire product lifecycle, and all capabilities should be available within the same user interface. If you’re part of a product management team, an optimization solution should support you from feature or product ideation, all the way through to releases. It should help you eliminate the risk that comes with innovation, and offer a safe and quick way to release fixes and improvements without having to engage developers on an urgent basis. Finally, it should give you the full range of analytics you need to understand the full picture of your product’s effect on the user experience, including the ability to easily integrate with your other analytics solutions. These are the features and functions you should make sure are part of your optimization solution.

Design, Validate, and Deploy New Ideas

Solutions for product teams shouldn’t focus only on release rollouts. You should be able to wireframe your designs, A/B test them, and personalize the online experience for specific segments of users. Before you devote extensive time and resources to designing a new feature or product, you should be able to validate that it actually works the way you want it to and positively affects your relevant metrics. Rather than waiting until the end of the development process to begin A/B testing and validating your ideas, building experimentation into the entire design and iteration process allows you to refine features as they evolve, saving you immeasurable time and resources.

Release Rollouts, and Not Just Feature Flags

Once it’s time to pilot your prototypes or release your new feature, you should have options for how you roll them out. An optimization tool purpose-built for product management teams will allow you to release your feature or product to specific, targeted segments, and gather a full range of data so you can understand how it impacts your user base. If you can release features with your optimization tool, you get the opportunity to handle bug fixes before anything is built into your base code. Otherwise, you may be looking at a long release process that could break or negatively impact other parts of the site, and then an even more painful rollback period to fix any bugs in your base code.

Approaching rollouts through a designated tool allows you to build and deploy features and products safely, before you even touch your base code. Make sure your tool allows for both Blue / Green and Canary testing, and gives you access to session and traffic management, continuous releases, and mobile and OTT support.

Learn About SiteSpect for Product Teams

SiteSpect solves problems across the entire product lifecycle, so that you can focus on the things that matter: product function, efficacy, and innovation. Our full service solution lets you design and validate your ideas, build them without disruption to your base code, and roll them out while gathering a full spectrum of data and analytics. By the time you introduce the new feature into your code base, you know it works.

To learn more about SiteSpect for Product Teams, visit sitespect.com/for-product-teams.