By Owen Fay . Posted on December 21, 2021Usability A/B testing is one of the best tools for understanding what your audience wants and making the right decisions before your business goes live.
The thing we love the most about usability testing is it works for any business and can be done for just about anything. It doesn’t matter if you’re a B2B or B2C business or whether you offer products or services.
But there are a ton of usability testing tools. Many of them are expensive, take a lot of time, and most of them are hard to use.
The good news is there’s one that’s different – our tool Poll the People. It’s easy to use and we offer a free version.
Ready to get started? Even if you don’t know much about usability A/B testing, this tool will help.
Here’s what you need to know about the benefits of usability A/B testing and when to use it.
When to use Usability A/B testing:
The answer obviously is before your business goes live. The realistic answer is whenever you can and on whatever you can.
As we know managing a business before launch has many moving parts and can be chaotic, you might not be able to test every part of the business.
Conducting usability A/B testing on everything you can is ideal but, it’s important to set goals and be intentional with your tests.
Here are some things I recommend usability A/B testing: Logos, website design, brand messaging, Google & Facebook ads, new features and products.
You can use usability A/B testing to test everything that you show users, the more you can test, the better understanding you’ll have of the users and what might work for your business.
5 Benefits of Usability A/B Testing:
1. Understand the Audience
The users are the most important part of your business, right? So why not do whatever you can to know what they want and need.
Every time you test a logo, web page, etc. you get feedback and learn what the audience wants and expects. If you use that feedback, you’re making smart improvements that create more engagement.
For example, when we were just starting out and looking for a logo, we tested two versions. In our own platform, we asked the dedicated panel to tell us the version that got our message across the best.
Version B (and our current logo) received more engagement and won the test, helping to inform the brand image moving forward.
We had data-backed information on the logo and created our style moving forward. This is one of the easiest things to test and can help a new business be successful from the start.
It’s a simple example but I’m sure you can see the benefits. It works for anything else you want to optimize and knowing your users gets you on the path to success.
2. Reduces Risk
It doesn’t matter if you are in the first stages of creating your business or looking to take the next step, there are a lot of risks involved. Making major changes to your brand, website, messaging, or anything else can take time and money.
We want to get the most out of our resources in any situation, usability A/B testing helps us make those important decisions quickly.
Especially if you are in a position where you must present your ideas to your boss or colleagues, you need to know you’re right. Testing gives you the data to show that one version of your resource is better and the target users agree.
So if you want to take some of the pain and worry out of making big decisions, just run a usability A/B test.
Ours take just about an hour to make, run, and analyze all while being less expensive than traditional platforms.
3. Ease of Analysis
This is where, even if you don’t have experience with usability A/B testing or are new to the game, Poll the People will help.
When examining the data from a test it is relatively easy to determine a “winner” and “loser” based on straightforward metrics. We provide you with a simple, yet effective results dashboard, telling you everything you need to know.
Ok, so you have a “winner” and a “loser” of the test, but what makes usability A/B testing with us different is you get real explanations of why it won.
Every person that voted in the test answers the question you asked and explains, in detail why the version they like works better, is more appealing or gives a better experience.
Here’s an example: You test two navigation tabs for your website that aim to help the user find the resource they’re looking for. You ask the user to navigate to a specific page and tell you about how the experience went.
They complete the task and choose the version that gives them a better experience. Once they choose the better option, they explain what made it better in detail.
You then look at the dashboard and see charts, graphs, and can filter the responses to understand what parts of the navigation worked best.
Now you have the quantitative and qualitative data to back up that navigation design or present the decision to others in your business with the confidence that it’ll work.
It’s really that easy to analyze the usability A/B test that only took about an hour to complete.
4. Saves Time and Money
Like we talked about with reducing risk, we all want to get the most out of our time and money. Usability A/B testing lets us identify the resources that offer the best return and make the most impact.
No two resources will offer the same results, one will always be better than another in some way. So identifying that version will minimize the chances of you spending all of your valuable time and money on it and then realizing it doesn’t work.
So now you might be thinking, but I’m spending my time and money on the test. While traditionally that was true, Poll the People is a little different.
Our usability tests are run in minutes, not days or weeks, letting you spend time elsewhere. The platform is also less expensive, for a test with 200 participants you’ll spend less than $100. In the past, the same test would take at least a few days and could cost over $1,000.
With the help of usability testing, businesses can find the option that offers the best return and eliminate the option that offers less. We want to put more time on your calendar and money back in your pocket.
5. Creating a Better Product
We always want the product or service to, well be sold. Usability A/B testing will help you get more engagement and hopefully get more sales.
When you launch tests for your new or current products and use testing as an ongoing process through the design phase or when introducing something new you find things that need to be improved.
Following this process will create products that reach their potential because you understand exactly how it benefits customers.
The more testing your team does the better grasp they will have on issues, what the user likes, and how to make more products that achieve the user’s goals.
It leads to products or services that are free of issues and optimized based on facts rather than assumptions.
Conclusion
If you’ve read this far you can see that usability A/B testing with Poll the People has a lot of benefits and is a lot easier to do than you might have thought.
Optimizing your resources before they go live improves engagement, gives you ways to create great products and improves user experience, all while reducing risk, saving time and money.
Our goal with Poll the People was not to create just another testing tool but to create an affordable, easy-to-use tool that lets you optimize any part of our business.
As you test, you’ll see exactly what works right in your results dashboard. Now that you know the benefits of usability A/B testing and when to conduct your research, you should be good to go.
So, are you ready to make better business decisions? Go to Poll the People and create a project. If you run into any issues leave us a comment or reach out.
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