Inside Out

It’s pretty quiet in our blog these days but I still have a lot of panels to sum up. This might probably take me till I attend SXSW 2009..

“Description: ‘A/B Testing’ is the practice of directing web traffic to multiple alternative designs to determine which is optimal. This method raises significant questions regarding the role of a designer and the need for a traditional design approach when deciding which design is ‘best.’ Are we being cut out of the equation?”

You will always need a designer, intuition and experience, because you simply can’t answer every single choice you have to make till you have a website by A/B testing. There are books, blogs, articles that offer general guidelines and help you avoid basic mistakes. A/B testing will help you afterwards in the optimization process and to validate your previous decisions. Lets put it this way: If you are developing a car you won’t ask your customers how to build the engine or how many wheels they prefer, but when it comes to colors or usability questions their opinion is important thus not always what you expect.

For effective A/B testing you need to focus on the goal of the site. You have to have one clear and measurable action/ site goal that you want to improve. Your sign ups etc might diminish during the testing but the lessons you learn from the test are worth it. Analysts and designers should work together in interpreting the result of the test. The analyst can provide the better data and interpret it more rationally because he wasn’t involved in the design process. The designer can point out connections between the design elements the analyst might not be aware of.

On the one hand the designer might feel less creative, because your audience might not appreciate your ideas, but it can also be the other way around. You might be able to test a really crazy idea which under “normal” circumstances would have never made it to the monitors of users and it might turn out to be the best solution.

For a more detailed Summary of the session check Matt Heerema’s Web Design Blog