If you are an owner of a successful app and desiring to redesign it. You may have several desired goals rather than redesigning it, like improving the application’s UX experience and switching to modern technology. But how will you know if the changes will be adopted by the audience warm-heartedly or not? The answer is A/B testing.
But are you capable of conducting A/B testing? If not, you can hire Indian App developers who will help you from preparing to conducting A/B testing and suggest the best updates for the improvement of your mobile and web app.
What is A/B Testing?
A/B testing or split testing is a marketing experiment to find out which variation (out of two or more) of the same feature or interface element is more appreciated by the users. In other words, you can understand A/B testing as an experiment wherein you show version A of a new feature or design to one of half of your audience, and version B to another half to determine which performs better.
There are two types of A/B test, you can conduct in order to increase the conversion rate of your website.
User Experience Test:
Suppose, you want to see how people will react if a certain call-to-action (CTA) button position is shifted from sidebar to the top of your homepage. Will it turn into an improved clickthrough rate?
To A/B test this theory, an alternative web page will be created with CTA placement change. And then you will compare both these designs by showing each of them to a predetermined share of the visiting audience. The audience share will be ideal for both versions. The existing design or version A is the “control” while the newly developed design with CTA placement change is Version B or the “challenger” for the A/B test.
Design Test:
In this scenario, you will test to see the change in conversion rate by changing the colour of your call-to-action (CTA) button.
To A/B test this theory, you would design an alternative CTA button draped in different colour controlling the same landing page. Suppose your existing CTA button’s colour is red in your marketing content and your variation green colour receives a better response in the A/B test. Therefore, changing your CTA button colour from red to green turned beneficial for you.
What are the Benefits of A/B Testing?
The A/B tests help marketers and business owners in eliminating uncertainty about making decisions for their mobile apps and web software. This way they can try out ideas hovering in their mind and tests them based on data from reports. The A/B testing is a platform where you can check the viability of your idea and user’s responses accordingly. Given below are some more benefits of split testing.
You can test updates before implementing them permanently for everyone. This helps in managing risks and saving money.
- You can improve the KPIs of your business.
- Gets an idea for improving the user interface, user experience, and content.
- Get to know the actual behavior and responses of users for new designs and features.
How to run an effective A/B testing for mobile apps and web software?
You can conduct A/B testing either on the app or on the app store page. However, in this post, we will focus on in-app content.
Analyze your app data before starting split testing
All the major names like Google, Facebook, and Netflix perform A/B testing regularly. For which, they utilize enough data to get reliable results. You can estimate success for your A/B test only with proper metrics.
Conversion rate- The percentage of users completed a goal in your app, whether to make a purchase or subscribe, etc.
Retention rate- It is the percentage of those users who are making purchases regularly and paying for a subscription in your app. It is calculated as an average as on a half-yearly or yearly basis.
Churn rate- it can be elaborated as the number of users has stopped using your services or buying anything from your app over a given period.
Active users- It is the number of unique users who use your app on a daily or monthly basis. Such users translate into daily active users and monthly active users.
Daily sessions: These are numbers that show how many times an active user opens your app in a single day.
An insight into average metrics can give you a good starting point for your industry. But for a longer run, you should set your benchmarks for success based on your industry standards.
This way, you will be able to find new ways to improve your app and get more satisfactory results.
Go with the A/B testing flow
It’s possible when you are collecting important data for A/B testing of your mobile apps and web apps. You will encounter several updates to make to the multiple parts of your app and redesign it as well. And this will crave you to perform testing on all of them but we recommend not to do so. Because, if you perform A/B testing on several elements at a time, you will not be able to find which of them will drive you the desired results. Therefore, performing spilt tests one by one is a better approach, which will help measure the accurate influence of every single update. Let’s move to the phase where you will learn how to A/B test your mobile application or a web app.
Prioritize elements
First and foremost create a priority list of elements for A/B testing based on the benefits you get from them and the problems they will solve. For example, if your landing page is confusing and you need to update the colour of buttons then you should start first with the onboarding page. Since in the very beginning it will cause difficulties to the users.
Also Read: How to Become a Web Developer?
Affirm your hypothesis
The hypothesis is an idea of what elements you will test to get the desired results. So it is necessary to affirm first what you want to split the test. You can test any changes for improving metrics and creating a better user experience. To do so, you need to set a goal first. Like you want to boost your retention rate to 35%.
Decide on segment and time duration
You must be wondering, how you can ensure the accuracy of the test results? To do so, you have to calculate the number of users and the duration of the test. Simply, you cannot do this manually. So there are several size calculators available in the market for free. You have to enter details like your current and desired conversion rates, number of variations, and number of daily users. And you will be provided with a recommended sample of users and test duration.
Create variables
To test the hypothesis, content is necessary and you can perform a single split test using several variations. However, more variations require more users. So, check on its own as for a 20% conversion rate, you will need 7200 users as suggested from the sample size calculator. But with the 4 variations, these user’s figures will manifold by two times. In case you don’t have that many users, you can be 100% sure of your test results.
Test multiple variables at the same time
Besides testing variables for the same part of your app at different times, try to test them at the same time. Because testing variables at different times can lead to insignificant results.
The timing of split testing can turn out to be an exception when you test the proper time to send push notification to your users.
Consider user feedback
Considering user feedback along with analytics data is the right approach to perform a well informed A/B test with desired results. Because better metrics also contain plenty of angry users. Ignoring them can easily misinterpret your A/B test outcome. So go hand in hand with analytics data and user feedback.
Report A/B test results and repeat
Once the A/B test gets completed, share test results with your team and users. It will let them know why the app is being updated. These results will inspire you for future results with new hypotheses, so you can conduct tests and arrange meetings regularly for the improvement of your app. If possible, draft a testing roadmap with detailed descriptions and repeat the A/B test flow all over again.
Final words
Preparing for conducting A/B testing or split testing, it is not that easy. But you should know that A/B testing plays a vital role in identifying where your app requires an update. Also, it helps business owners in making firm decisions with confirmed success which results in saving money and resources as well. We hope our guide of A/B testing for mobile and web apps will turn out fruitful to you.
My name is Nicolas Thomas. I am Managing Director and Co-Founder of Indian App Developer, leading Software and Mobile App Development Company India. My ideology is that a clear vision and hard work build a great company. I started my career in Information and Technology 10 years back as a new-age Entrepreneur in emerging digital India.
