A/B testing played a significant role in the ultimate success of the Obama Campaign during the last election. From e-mails to their website –A/B testing helped increase not only their sign-ups on the website but their donations by a significant amount.
A/B testing is about deciding on which marginally different options to test (hence the A and B options), trying both and comparing results to discover which of these were most effective in meeting target audience needs.
Below is an explanation of A/B experiments:
One example of the campaign effectively reaching target audience with the help of A/B testing, was the discovery that by reducing the length of the form in a several smaller steps actually motivated more visitors to donate to their campaign.
In my opinion, it is easy for most of us to view the incredible results of the Obama Campaign by viewing the great number of donations as being a result of a very small change. But in fact, there has been endless changes made, small nonetheless, but expectations of small enhancements from small changes, visitors of the website (on any electronic device) were able to access the user friendly platform and more easily donate.
The campaign was successful in taking the results of A/B testing and understanding how the visitors of their website valued their time spent. In fact, the reason the longer form was not as effective for their target audience was because visitors valued their time more than filling out the long and somewhat tedious first page of the form.
While the more successfully marketed donation page appears to consist of a form shorter in length –this is certainly not the case. The changes made actually consisted of the same form broken up into 4 smaller steps:
- Donation amount
- Personal information
- Billing information and finally
- Occupation/Employer
Source: http://kylerush.net/blog/optimization-at-the-obama-campaign-ab-testing/
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