How to set goals for A/B testing.

Setting the correct goals is a vital part of A/B testing your product. Not only will the right goals measure how well your experiments affect the way users interact with your product, but they’ll also indicate whether test variations achieve your business’s goals better than the original.

You can select the most relevant goals for your A/B experiments by understanding your business objectives. Then, using their results, your team can make data-driven decisions that will produce long-term, positive impacts for users and your business.

Below, we show you how to identify the right goals for your A/B testing process, list some key goal types you may want to use, and detail some strong testing tools that you can easily integrate with any web analytics tools.

How to identify A/B testing goals.

When broken down, identifying the right goals to track before A/B testing is quite simple. First, you need to understand what your business’s main objectives are. Then, your team will lay out goals for your A/B test that connect to those same business objectives. Finally, you’ll select the metrics that accurately measure how close your product’s variants are to achieving them. Here’s a more detailed breakdown of those same steps to follow:

1) Evaluate your main business goals.

For your A/B test results to be applicable and valuable to your business, they need to align with your business’ essential objectives. These will vary based on your industry.

For example, if you’re part of an eCommerce company, your company’s primary goal would be to generate more revenue by selling more products. Taking this into account helps narrow down the types of goals that are most relevant to achieving the central objectives of your business.

2) Choose the right A/B testing goals.

Next, you and your team can determine what goals to track when you run tests on various aspects of your product. This will usually reflect or involve your business’s main objectives.

Following the previous eCommerce example, your team’s A/B testing goals may relate to how different iterations impact sales and revenue. For example, you might want to:

• Find what visual changes you need to make to popular product web pages in order to encourage visitors to make a purchase.
• Try out different email marketing campaigns that advertise a variety of items on sale to see which combinations lead to increases in revenue.

3) Identify key performance indicators.

Finally, in addition to selecting the right goals for your A/B test, you should also identify some key performance indicators, or KPIs. Good KPIs will connect to your business objectives. Additionally, you need to choose a primary KPI that will serve as the main indicator of success for your A/B test.

Returning to the eCommerece example, some good primary KPIs to track would be average order value and cart abandonment rate.

You should also have secondary metrics that directly relate to the primary metric and provide additional insights into your test performance.

With enough consideration and critical thinking, you and your team can create clear, effective A/B testing goals. As a result, you’ll be able to accurately measure test variations and ensure successful outcomes for your business.

4 A/B testing goal types to consider.

When performing an A/B test, your team will track test performance based on certain key metrics from the app or website data collected. These key metrics are your goal types and are set in your testing tool. The tool then automatically monitors certain kinds of app or website data essential to your test results. Here are four goal types you should consider following:

Website clicks.

Site clicks refer to the number of times website visitors click on certain page elements, such as links, images, or call-to-action buttons. Raising the number of site clicks can be a vital A/B testing goal if your business is looking to improve click-through rates among certain pages or your entire site.

Page/site visitors.

Page or site visitors is another goal type that focuses on how many users directly or indirectly reach your website. With proper website and page analytics, you’ll be able to see which pages receive the most visitors and the types of user activity they’re engaging in. This is a significant goal for businesses looking to test ways to drive website traffic and increase brand awareness.

Form submissions.

The number of forms users submit is another effective goal to set over the course of your A/B tests. By setting form submission goals and analyzing the data, you can gain insight into the effectiveness of your experiments and make data-driven decisions to improve your conversion rates. It is a valuable metric to indicate which variations of your site, or its elements, affect user engagement and can also produce potential leads.

Revenue generated.

Finally, among the most significant goal types to set and track is the amount of revenue an A/B test generates. This goal type aligns with practically every business objective as it focuses on increasing sales and generating more revenue. It can also provide valuable insight into the financial impact of your experiments and help guide further tests later on.

These are just a few different KPIs to track as your digital product undergoes numerous A/B testing variations. Additionally, many A/B testing tools allow you to set custom goals that involve users triggering specific JavaScript events. These can offer diverse goal types that more closely track customer behavior and provide even better insights.

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