
How To Increase Site Performance Through A/B Split - jmonegro
http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/how-to-increase-site-performance-through-ab-split-testing/
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paraschopra
Though simple A/B tests are better than not doing any tests at all, the true
power of testing is realized when you are doing targeted tests. In most of the
solutions currently in the market, you can only do blanket tests: that is, all
visitors see the same test. Much better approach would be to do tests for a
segment of visitors because it is quite likely that your organic traffic would
have different optima than your direct traffic. Similarly, repeat visitors
would respond differently than first time visitors.

Also, websites usually have multiple goals. For example, while your A/B test
may tell you that you have reached optima as far as clicks on the banner is
concerned, you won't know if you have compromised on other goals such as
visitor engagement, newsletter signups, etc. The point here is that you must
measure performance on multiple goals to see the correct tradeoff.

My team has been developing a powerful testing solution called Wingify
(<http://www.wingify.com/>). We have limited number of private beta accounts
available. If anyone is interested, mail me at paras@wingify.com

Oh, and BTW, there is a screencast of using Wingify for setting up an
experiment as well. You might find it helpful for an introduction to A/B
testing - <http://www.wingify.com/video-demos/create_experiment/>

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geuis
We've done 2 of these tests in the last few weeks using a small in-house
framework I wrote and its already showing improvements in overall page views.
Our initial tests have been small and were done completely client-side with
javascript, using an existing internal reporting solution. Its very easy to
set this kind of thing up without even needing complicated 3rd party tools.

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modoc
Does anyone have feedback on the Google A/B testing tool, Website Optimizer?
It looks neat, but I haven't tried it yet.

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patio11
Having A/B testing is better than not having it, and Website Optimizer is
quick to implement and holds the hand of people who don't understand what an
A/B test is yet.

However, because it is implemented in Javascript, the impact on page load
times is _substantial_ (download page A and assets, execute Javascript,
download page B, actually see page). Since you will often want to use it on
high value pages like, oh, your checkout funnel that is less than optimal.

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burnout1540
If you follow Google's instructions and put the Control Script within the
<head> tag on page A, the JavaScript will get executed and the user will get
redirected to page B before page A and its assets load. Also, if the user gets
put into group A, then all of page A is allowed to load and the user is not
redirected at all.

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jacquesm
AB testing is a great tool to make your site perform better, if you're not
doing it yet you probably should!

