A/B Testing works best when you establish a process. Having an established process will help you focus your energy and determine what is working and what is not quickly.
Why are processes important? Processes describe how things are done, provide the focus for making the outcome better, and align energies and efforts. Most importantly though, a process determines how successful the outcome will be. If you focus on the right processes (and steps within the process), in the right way, you can design your way to success.
Example Process
Mike Loveridge (the Head of Conversion Rate Optimization at TSheets by QuickBooks) wanted to ramp up Intuit’s A/B testing velocity and build an experimentation-forward culture. To do this though, he needed to establish a process that would allow both speed and ease implementation. He and his team developed this three-step process.
- Reviewing data from Google Analytics and past A/B tests, to find out where website visitors might be getting stuck in the funnel and on specific pages sections.
- Using Crazy Egg Snapshots and Recordings to observe the user experience firsthand to further identify areas of opportunities.
- Running experiments (A/B tests) and using Crazy Egg Heatmaps and Confetti reports as part of the analysis during and after the test.
The result he says, “We recently scaled to 20 tests a month. It’s amazing how different everything is at the company when you have that additional customer data to work with an established process that allows us to design our way to success.”
The Process in Action
Mike’s team completed several experiments, one of which was on their Pricing Page. Following their process, the team noticed that website visitors showed fantastic engagement with content, but half the traffic still did not convert.
Using Crazy Egg’s user session Recordings, they discovered a high percentage of prospects were checking out the pricing information, then scrolling back up to the header and using the navigation to leave the page. Going elsewhere on the site. Essentially, they had an unintended escape hatch. “We wouldn’t have known this if we hadn’t watched several video recordings for ourselves,” says Mike.
Armed with this insight, the team concluded that visitors were either (1) getting distracted or (2) needed more information (or were curious about other choices). Now, the team will A/B test a few ways to reduce the noise on the page.
For another example with proven results, check out the Case Study: Wall Monkey’s 550% Conversion.