Multi-Variant (A/B) Testing
Often it is said there are three types of people who visit your website:
  • People who will buy no matter what you do.
  • People who will NOT buy from you, no matter what you do.
  • People who "Might" buy from you, depending on what you do.
While the percentage changes based on customer composition and traffic, the third group is who the A/B test is intended to target and that is the group who the site should be designed for.
Is A/B Testing Right for You
Experience shows pages with less than 10,000 visitors in a 1 week period probably won't see any difference no matter what changes they make even if the changes are major. Changing subtle things such as formatting of a title or a "Border around an image" typically will not produce measurable results, and would literally take probably 50,000 visitors per week or more to see any type of measurable difference in sales. The business rationale for monitoring "Small changes" is usually not worth the cost/overhead of setting up the test.

The duration of the test is another important factor. Many products have a multi-day or even multi-week and in some cases multi-month buyer behavior. Visitors come to the site, do research, and then might come back and visit 3-5 times before actually making a purchase. Again these are the people who "might" buy from you, and the ones the test is intended for. If your changes affect short term "instant" sales by 5%, but increase long term 2 week "researched" sales by 20% then the change overall was good, however the first week won't look good at all, at least depending on what percentages of clients you have coming to the site. A/B tests do not measure buyer behavior, they measure sales, they also don't measure return rates or customer service impact from converting "long term" buyers into "instant sales". The same goes for the reverse, a compelling "call to action" might cause an instant burst by converting 4 week buyers, into "day one" buyers, but over a 4 week period - there would be no change in sales, or possibly even a higher return rate as buyer remorse is more common on "instant sales. Buyer behavior must be inferred through research and experience.
Creating A/B Testing
A/B tests are most commonly used to gauge the effectiveness of changes to a certain aesthetic element or across the entire site. Our design department will work closely with you to determine what are those elements you want to test, design the variation and set it up for you.
Testing Changes on One Page
In order to conduct an A/B test on only one page, or specific page(s), the layout will need to be designed to selectively display content for both A and B. The layout would be configured to selectively display content based on the state of the variable. Elements of the page which do not change between A/B would not require any modification. This approach is commonly used when more than one category and/or product page is in use on the site at a given time.
Viewing A/B Test Sites
After the criterion for testing has been set, and the A versus B various produced, we will provide specific links that would show you one version versus the other. Viewing Sales Reports The online sales reports (in the reports area) display a multi-variable column and break out sales totals for each variable. Further reporting is available through setting up goals in Google Analytics.
Modifying Google Analytics
A code will output either an "A" or a "B" if multi-variable (A/B) testing is enabled. Nox uses this to track performance. There is no need for a separate Google Analytics account. The new B pages modules will be tracked through parameters.
Experimenting with Page Layouts
A/B testing allows two different sites to be configured. Making it possible to experiment with different page layouts.
Some common design elements on the homepage to test include:
  • The existence of the left hand menu system
  • Featuring products on the homepage
  • Featuring top level categories in addition to products on the homepage
  • Having a large slideshow, or smaller slideshow or no slideshow at all.
All of these elements are relatively simple to test and to gauge effectiveness. Since most of these elements will affect the homepage abandonment rate.
Some other common pages or elements that could be tested are:
  • Product page: experimenting with various text and product image photos. Results are usually tied directly to shopping cart abandonment
  • Cart page: how much upsell to show on this page?
  • Cart review page: do you completely skip the cart page with the products upsells and go directly to the cart review page.
  • Order thanks page: do you ask for Facebook and email list subscription here or not. This is tied to order cancellations.
  • Guest Check out - do you allow guest check out or not and how does it affect order volume and cart abandonment
  • New Shopper Single page registration versus multi page registration
New Promotion/Shipping Rules: A/B Site Filter
Along with being able to run A/B testing using elements, promotion/coupon rules and shipping rules can now also be set to apply only to the A or B site. The ability to activate/deactivate promotions means you can test the results of different marketing campaigns on the same traffic source. This will be found when creating rules for promotions and shipping.
Mobile Commerce is much more than copying and pasting your ecommerce site to your mobile site, as the customer's usage and buying behaviors are unique to mobile.
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A/B Testing
A/B tests are most commonly used to gauge the effectiveness of changes to a certain aesthetic element or across the entire site. We work closely with you to determine the elements you want to test, design the variation and set it up.  + Read more
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