← Glossary Marketing

A/B Test

A controlled experiment: half the visitors see A, half see B, measure which wins.

Explained simply.

A/B testing (also called split testing) is how you know if a change actually worked. You randomly split traffic: 50% see the original (A), 50% see the variant (B). Same period, same audience, different experience. Whichever has the higher conversion rate (above a statistical threshold) wins. Without this, you're guessing.

An example.

Test: current button text 'Sign Up' (A) vs new text 'Start Free Trial' (B). Run for two weeks. A converts at 4.2%, B at 5.1%. B wins by 21%; that's significant over enough visitors. Ship B as the new default. Design the next test.

Why it matters.

Intuition about what will convert is usually wrong. A/B testing replaces opinion with evidence. But: you need enough traffic to reach statistical significance (usually thousands of visitors per variant), and you can only test so many things at once. Prioritize tests by potential impact.