In today’s world, mobile apps are all around us. Not only is the demand increasing, but the market size is also getting bigger daily. As a mobile app publisher, learning and then applying new strategies is inevitable to grow your app among other competitors. One of the effective strategies of a well-designed user journey is to test what works and what doesn't. A/B Testing, also known as Split Testing, is a powerful method to understand that clearly.
What is A/B Testing?
A/B Testing, also known as Split Testing, is a methodology to analyze how well or poorly the user experience is performing. It refers to comparing two versions of user interfaces and screens by randomly segmenting the audience into two or more groups. You can use split Testing for different purposes, for ads, product pages, designs, or others. The A/B Testing aims to find out the variables that work the best. With successfully applied A/B Testing, excellent results may come up, directly affecting mobile app conversion rates.
How does A/B Testing work?
Split Testing is a very powerful tool to gain actionable insights if you have the right people, tools, and time to do that. It helps product and marketing teams to empathize with the users and develop a better experience for them. Before you start, creating a well-organized plan for the A/B Testing is highly recommended to avoid the common pitfalls of conducting A/B Tests. Also, determining the right assets and hypotheses to test for your mobile apps is as important as the execution part.
1. Define your pain points
You cannot do it all with just one A/B test. So to make it clear and correct, you should first focus on the growth (AARRR) funnel and understand at which point you may have issues. Is it when downloading your app from the product page? Or you have massive app downloads but suffering to turn them into revenue. Define them all and focus on one issue for each A/B Testing. If you try to test all of them simultaneously, it will probably not give you the best results.
2. Create a goal
What do you want to accomplish with your A/B Testing? To measure how efficient your campaign was, define the key metrics that will help you to succeed. Please choose one of them, and build your split test around it. It may be increasing the sales by 30% of onboarding pages or making users spend more time in the app. Specific and well-defined goals are critical factors in A/B tests.
3. Segment your audience random but equal
To start your Testing, you should divide your users into groups. The number of groups changes according to the variables you would like to test. If you have two onboarding pages to test, equally and randomly divide the users into two groups. It's also okay to try more than two pages at the same time, as does having more than two grouped audiences.
4. Conduct the A/B Testing
Start your test and wait for all the users to join it. If you're using an A/B testing tool, you can look at the first analysis daily to understand them. At this point, you can calculate each user's experience and engagement regarding the item that you are testing.
5. Analyze the results
It's time to see the results! Check out the statistics of the A/B test and see the difference between them. Find the most effective results and implement that to provide the best of your app. If both campaigns don't perform well, then it's time to create new testing items and start testing them. Or there may be something that you're missing and went wrong during the test. You can conduct A/B Testing for each level of the AARRR funnel or product developments.
What are the benefits of A/B Testing?
A/B Testing helps you to find out the best experience within the mobile apps and maintain it with a meaningful roadmap. Before launching a mobile application, the UI is usually designed based on gut feelings and instincts, which can be misleading most of the time. With split testing, the whole experience can be structured on a statistical basis which is connected with the conversion rates. It's a great way to measure app performance and make it better. Here are some benefits of A/B Testing.
It helps to increase;
- Conversion rate
- User Engagement
- Retention rate
and decrease app deletions.
Regularly testing the app performance with A/B Testing brings innovative ideas to apply as well. As you'll be the one who understands its audience better, you can provide the best user experience according to test results. In mobile apps, you should optimize each step for the users since there are many competitors in the market, so an app without well-optimized will have low conversion rates at every point.
Another benefit that A/B testing provides is a better ASO. App Search Optimization is a combination of the whole work which is done in the product, App Store page, and user experience. You can use A/B Testing to increase app downloads by testing different product pages, screenshots, app icons, etc., or to increase the time a user spends in the app that directly affects the ASO.
A/B Testing can be used in every step to make better apps and have higher rankings among other competitors. So use that!
AB tests are great, but when doing that, be careful of the common pitfalls that everyone can make. Visit our Common Pitfalls of Conducting A/B Testing article to learn more.
