The Danger of Not Having the Right Testing and Optimization Technology

The word danger can be considered hyperbolic, right? I'm sure there are countless titles of posts and articles that included it just for the sake of garnering attention AKA clicks. Of course if I had used the word grave in front of it - grave danger, that would have really upped the hyperbolic scale. 

Then again, as Jack Nicholson in the film A Few Good Men famously responded when asked if someone was in grave danger: "Is there another kind?"

Decide for yourself if you think the following statistic calls for danger or grave danger.

Poor A/B testing methodologies are costing online retailers up to $13 billion a year in lost revenue. 

I don't know about you but when I hear up to $13 billion lost in one year, that's pretty much the poster child for grave danger. 

Testing and Optimization Technology - What You Need To Know

Website optimization helps companies learn more about their audience and then more directly and accurately give each segment the experience it needs to convert. And seeing how the entire world—or so it seems—is on a mobile device or app with increasing frequency, it is equally important to optimize your mobile channels including apps. 

By running A/B or multivariate tests—the two most popular forms of optimization testing—businesses obtain data results that reveal valuable patterns in customer behavior so they can make better decisions about what content to show to which customers, at what time, and in what way. 

In order to run an optimization test, companies have to create different versions of a website for each of its segments. Different versions will use different elements in different ways, depending on the intended audience. Elements are the overall defining features of a website: images, copy, calls-to-action, color scheme, and much more. Variants are the changes that companies make to these elements and address size, placement, color, content, and even inclusion at all.

The technology solution you choose must provide this type of functionality in order for effective and accurate testing to take place. 

When it comes to mobile, just because the desktop version of a website or application delivers x, y, and z doesn’t mean the mobile version has to deliver the same, even in a mobile-friendly form. Desktop customer experiences are by nature more expansive, and there are natural differences between desktop and mobile that companies and developers must simply accept.  

The technology you use should provide one user interface for every device— whether you’re launching test campaigns to desktop, smartphone, or tablet. It should also provide equal testing and personalization functionality across the board. 

In terms of analytics, there are two key metrics marketers need to think about: pre-test and post-test. In pre-test the need is to understand who your website’s visitors are, and what preferences they have. Most important is understanding the underperforming visitor segments that you can target with more relevant user experiences. 

Post-test provides an automated process to find visitor micro segments and the content that they prefer, then the opportunity to target them with those relevant experiences 

The technology tool you use should show what experiences produced the most engagement, conversions, and revenue. It needs to also aggregate customer data to help you bundle your audience into segments/profiles, which helps locate profitable opportunities and make informed hypotheses. 

There is much more to this story including what your technology solution needs to provide when it comes to personalization and the questions you need to ask of any potential optimization vendor. Plus remember that testing and optimization is only part of the overall technology stack. 

Download The Guide to Building Your Marketing Technology Stack to get the whole story. 

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