

Wingify Launches A New A/B Testing Platform For People Without Coding Experience - ankneo
http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/25/wingify-launches-a-new-ab-testing-platform-for-people-without-coding-experience/

======
paraschopra
Hello, CEO here. We had been working on a completely new version of Visual
Website Optimizer (called VWO). Here's the launch post:
[https://vwo.com/blog/launching-new-vwo/](https://vwo.com/blog/launching-new-
vwo/)

Happy to answer any questions on what's new and what's our vision of A/B
testing.

~~~
trjordan
High-level, I think that's a great message. Having moved out of engineering
and into marketing, I like tools that don't force me to code. There's a pretty
good correlation between "doesn't require a dev" and "easy to use, even if you
could write code".

On the other hand, Optimizely is sending basically the same message. Is there
something that you're doing differently than them? Or are you just trying to
do what they do, but better?

~~~
paraschopra
We're evolving from just being an A/B testing tool to being a comprehensive
platform for optimizing conversions. This means features like heatmaps,
IdeaFactory, website reviews and personalization.

The whole package together allows a marketer to do regular conversion
optimization (and not just A/B testing). Check out the feature set at
[http://vwo.com/features](http://vwo.com/features)

~~~
trjordan
Nice, got it!

------
splitforce
Congrats Paras! New dashboard is looking nice, and I especially like the
ability to retroactively segment results based on different customer
dimensions and discover new opportunities for personalization.

One thing that I've noticed is that traditional A/B testing is a pretty sub-
optimal way of answering the question: 'What works better, A or B?'

In the most basic example of an A/B test, you have a variation A and a
variation B each shown to 50% of your user base. By definition, this approach
will be sending half of your users to a worse performing version during the
entire duration of the test!

The automated approach is based on a bandit algorithm that dynamically updates
the proportion of users shown a given variation. With each new piece of data
that you collect on the test variations' conversion rates and confidence, the
algorithm adjusts the percentages automatically so that better performing
variations are promoted and worse performers are pruned away.

This leads to:

1) faster results, because your directing test resources (i.e.: users and
their data) to validate what you actually care about (i.e.: confidence in the
best variation’s performance)

2) a higher average conversion rate during the test itself, because relatively
more users are being sent to the better performing variation automatically,
and

3) less time and effort required to actively manage your experiments.

Though the math behind this approach is slightly more complex than a
traditional A/B test, it’s a no-brainer for those that are really interested
in making data-driven decisions because of how much better the results are
that it produces.

For anyone interested, here’s a post we put together on how it works:
[http://splitforce.com/resources/auto-
optimization/](http://splitforce.com/resources/auto-optimization/)

------
joedrew
The #1 problem I've had in using external A/B testing platforms is that they
allow flashes of the old content before the new is shown (if perhaps only for
some users). We've seen huge problems with conversion when testing with those
tools which we don't see when running A/B tests using server-side
implementations.

If Wingify/VWO has solved this once and for all, it'd be _wonderful_.

~~~
quarterconfig
Curious about "huge problems". Is there must be some data you could share to
demonstrate this?

(ie: conversions dipped x% when we didn't use a server-side implementation)

~~~
joedrew
I'll have to look into the exact data, but conversions dipped at least 33% —
even on the 'A' side.

~~~
nedwin
That sounds incredibly high. What site is this on?

------
Angostura
Which version of the site would Webcrawlers and indexing engines see? I'm just
trying to work out whether this kind of tool has applicability when
researching SEO tweaks on a site.

~~~
ericclemmons
The control. JavaScript triggers the tests, and most testing suites explicitly
don't serve tests to Googlebot or crawler IPs.

~~~
Angostura
Cheers, that makes sense.

------
chintan
just a heads up. links on wingify.com are giving a 404
[http://wingify.com/about](http://wingify.com/about)
[http://wingify.com/careers](http://wingify.com/careers)

~~~
paraschopra
Thanks for the heads up. Fixed it.

------
bytestreetboy
Really nice design! Very well thought intuitive product for web and mobile
optimisation !

~~~
paraschopra
Thanks!

------
darklrd
Three lettered domain name is really cool. Great product. Congratulations!

