Reduce The Risk Of Bad Decisions With Pre-Live A/B Testing
By Owen Fay . Posted on January 28, 2022

Perfectionist? Do you always aim to make the right decision? How would usability A/B testing help you? Is one big test better than many quick tests? There are a lot of different questions people have about the benefits of investing in a testing process.

There is no denying the fact that some level of risk is always there in the business, but the biggest risk is not analyzing your decisions beforehand with usability A/B testing. To get answers to all your questions, read through this blog.

Usability A/B Testing As A Risk Management Tool

The goal of usability A/B testing is always to find issues with your business’s usability, helping us optimize the business. No one can argue that there’s no risk in business, but how can you minimize it?

Usability A/B testing allows you to get the best possible balance between taking business risks and reaping business rewards.

Honestly, at its core usability A/B testing is a risk management tool. You never want to make a decision that could ultimately hurt the value of your company.

If you don’t invest in risk management, it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, there is the possibility that your new ideas won’t work. By usability A/B testing any new concept, feature, or design you can minimize that risk of failure.

Business Decision Making

It’s clear that we want to get the best possible return on investment, but a lot of the time we have to take risks to get there. Every business wants to roll out new features or resources but how do you know if it’ll work? 

One single decision can impact your business in a lot of ways. One change may have a big effect (good or bad) but if the cost is equally larger or even larger, it might be the worst decision you’ve made. Return on investment is calculated by multiplying the effect with impact and dividing it by the cost.

Before making any business decision, look for answers to these questions; what is the revenue impact of the decision I am planning to make? What is the expected effect of the action or what will be the cost?

Sometimes, the impact is unimportant to calculate related to revenue that will be affected by the change. In the context of usability A/B testing, understanding the balance between risk and reward requires insight into cost and benefits.

Usability A/B testing is a unique process in terms of getting very reliable estimates of the costs and benefits. The testing should be done planning phase of a new concept to get feedback from real people at the right time.

Optimize For The Best Risk/Reward Ratio

It is obvious now that usability A/B testing is a risk management tool, but how would you design it to attain successful results? There are certain factors to optimize for the best risk/reward ratio.

The sample size is one variable that can make a test good or bad. The sample size is determined by the expected amount of page views, sessions, and most importantly users.

The way you set up a usability A/B test also has a significant bearing on the success of a test. Writing down the specific goals goes a long way in reducing the risk of wrong decisions. Why waste time on testing for vague goals? Test the right things the first time with a good understanding of if it achieved your goals.

Choosing The Right Audience

number of responsesIn usability A/B testing the audience you test with is just as important as anything else. It eliminates any type of previous bias from the test, you always want your test to be representative of all of your potential customers. Defining the target audience is an important step in creating a successful test.

Make sure to test on users that might know your business and those that have never heard of you. Getting a wide range of responses from users with different backgrounds and knowledge will help the credibility of your testing process.

Gaining Statistical Significance

The number of users you test with has its own value. The gain full confidence in your test you need to think about how many responses you need to make an educated decision.

As mentioned earlier, statistical significance reduces the risk of failure once you launch, but what is statistical significance?

Statistical significance is a term that basically describes how likely it is that the difference between the experiment’s version A and version B isn’t due to an error. Let’s suppose you conducted a test with a 90% significant level, you will be 90% sure that the results are factual.

Data-Backed Decision Making

Once you have conducted the test and gathered the feedback, what’s next? It’s decision-making time.

The most important thing is to make the right decision at the right time, data will definitely help in doing that. The test allows you to take a rational approach to decision-making rather than choosing based on emotions or gut instinct.

With valuable insights from real people and the data to back it up, you can easily find the best option for your business.

Another plus side of the test is that it gives you confidence in what you are doing. Your decisions are backed by the data which is gained from real users.

A confident decision is much more likely to be successful than any decision which is made without usability A/B testing. You will have everything you need to present the findings to your team or boss. 

We don’t want Poll the People to be just another testing tool but, to be a way for anyone to optimize their business while saving time and money by reducing risk. 

Conclusion

It would be great if business people worldwide used a testing process to make good decisions to make their businesses successful. Following the steps in this blog and putting the information you learned into action will help.

It’s always best practice to utilize data, especially in usability A/B testing with Poll the People. With this platform, testing is done within minutes, not days. You can decide between two variations with real user feedback.

Hundreds or thousands of people are there to vote on your test and we provide you with an easy-to-understand results dashboard. There is really no excuse to not conduct usability A/B testing on any of your projects.

A good usability A/B testing process can bring any business to the top because data-backed decisions and reducing risk have so many benefits. Learn more about reducing risk and making the best decisions for your business by reading our blog or exploring Pollthepeople.app

 

Owen Fay

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