When Uber was first introduced in the market, people found it hard to trust an application that proposed safe and timely travel. 

Despite being just an app, it offered a solution to a multitude of problems. The easy-to-use app had a remarkable user experience and highly effective functionality that revolutionized personal transportation. 

User experience plays an indispensable role in influencing the customer retention of a mobile application. Key features such as the information architect, accessibility, feel, structure, and speed make it easy for a mobile app to stay ahead of the game. It cannot be denied that the quality of user experience determines the future of a business.  

Since 90% of smartphone users spend most of their time on applications, it is integral for app developers to pay extra attention to the user interface. 

The user interface is the first thing that customers notice. It leaves a huge impact on the minds of viewers and influences the progress of a business. 

A user-friendly mobile app promises a better reputation for your brand. Well-thought out investment in the user experience can give you a significant return on investment. 

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Examples of A/B testing for enhancing user experience 

YouTube 

YouTube rolled out a new interface over a year ago. The new layout of YouTube is designed with an emphasis on its recommendations feature. Users can create a playlist by clicking the red button next to ‘My recommendations’. This idea is to enhance the user experience and create a relationship of trust among users and YouTube machine learning algorithms. 

Additionally, the new YouTube layout has an ‘Auto Option’ which allows users to adjust the video quality according to the speed of the internet connection. Auto higher picture quality (depending on your internet connection), data saver, and advanced auto speed systems make the user experience of YouTube better than before.

Facebook 

Facebook constantly updates the interface of its mobile application. There is a massive difference between the old interfaces of Facebook with the new one. Everything is changed in the latest design. For better user experience, users can enable the dark mode, have access to a new ‘burger menu’ design from the top-right-drop-down-arrow. The setting remains the same but the icons are updated.  

Instagram 

When Instagram started, it was a place for users to edit and share pictures easily. Over those years, things have changed to a great extent. Instagram has become a diverse community of interests where people share more photos and videos than ever. The new icon of Instagram has a colorful design with a simpler and softer camera appearance. 

While Instagram’s icon is now filled with color, the application itself has had the color removed. The new black and white design of this application engages users and makes it appealing. A seamless experience encourages more users to use the application.

Businesses tend to update their interfaces to provide the most optimal user experience. However, the application interface updates are not done out of the blue.

Extensive research is done before a new interface is finalized. Mobile app developers and business analysts conduct A/B testing on multiple interfaces before actually publishing the update on Play Store and App Store.

Let’s discuss how A/B testing helps businesses determine the most optimum mobile application interface.  

A step-by-step guide for conducting effective A/B testing

In a competitive app development world, it is imperative to learn how to optimize a mobile application. A small and positive change in user experience can have a significant impact on conversion rates. Therefore, it is essential to test what works.

The aforementioned examples of Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram state that A/B testing for mobile applications works by dividing an audience into two or more groups. Then see how different layouts and user interfaces impact the user experiences.  

A/B testing is one of the cyclical processes used by app developers for optimizing an application and its campaigns.

Here are the steps for doing it effectively. 

Develop a hypothesis 

Research and analyze the available information and commence developing your hypothesis. 

What type of application do you want to test? 

Who is your target audience? 

How to proceed if your hypotheses are proven/disproven? 

Segment your audience 

The next step in this program is to create a target audience based on your hypothesis. Multiple interfaces are rolled out to the target audience sample for testing. You can also test interfaces with multiple target audiences to see which one works best for you.  

Analyze results and deploy changes 

A/B testing is a process of persistent data gathering and analysis. Therefore, the entire journey unravels. Once you are done with A/B testing, analyze the overall feedback of your audience such as their receptiveness to the interface and accessibility of key features.  

To improve conversions, A/B testing is one of the optimum ways that lets you work systematically through every part of your mobile application. This test is carried out to enhance the overall user experience by enhancing accessibility, creating alluring calls to action (CTAs), and organizing the overall user story of a mobile application. 

The best A/B testing tools

Here are the best A/B testing tools on the market for optimizing the user experience of your app.

#1. Firebase A/B testing 

Now is the time to achieve your business goals with Firebase A/B testing. It helps people improve the functionality of an application by making it easy to run, analyze, and scale products. 

This tool gives you the flexibility to customize your experiment according to unique business needs. You can determine what elements to test, which target audience to focus on, what parameters to put in place, and how many variants to include. 

#2. Omni Convert 

Omni convert is a conversation rate platform that offers A/B testing tools and segmentation tools. With the help of this effective and highly versatile tool, companies can run the test on various devices like desktop, mobile, and tablet. This platform blends the segmentation tool with the A/B testing tool for testing over 40 segmentation parameters like traffic source, geo-location, and visitor behavior. This ends up strengthening the overall user experience of mobile application users. 

#3. AB testy 

AB testy is an A/B testing optimization software with personalization tools, data insights, and multivariate testing processes. With the help of this tool, companies can build tests, split tests, multivariate tests, and funnel tests. 

AB testing is an ideally suitable tool for validating tests and offering reports. It displays the answers to the test in real-time. 

#4. Freshmarketer 

Freshmarketer is the best conversion rate optimization software that offers A/B testing and Split URL testing. Through this test, companies get to know the preferences of their target audience and they can track the amount of revenue generated from these experiments. 

This tool helps in testing various variations of URLs, turning winning test variations into real mobile applications, and grasping the effectiveness of your mobile application by offering heatmaps of every variation of URL split test. 

#5. Optimizely 

Optimizely is the best digital experimentation platform for the engineering team and enterprise marketing. Using this powerful multi-page experimentation tool, companies can run various experiments at the same time. This effective tool allows you to test multiple variables of your mobile application. 

Also, it offers testing on dynamic mobile applications (geography, campaigns, and cookies) and various experiment segmentation parameters (devices, browsers). 

#6. Pushwoosh 

Pushwoosh is a free kit with everything you need to run A/B testing including a tracking template, instructional guide, and statistical significance calculator. Pushwoosh clearly tells whether your test wins, losses, or is inconclusive. 

This tool sets up efficient cross-channel communications by sending push notifications, in-app messages, and emails to users. 

#7. VWO 

VWO is a highly effective tool that is trusted by over 45, 00 enterprise brands. This conversion rate optimization platform is specifically tailored for enterprise brands. This tool has a drop-and-drop editor that builds A/B tests, split URL tests, and multivariate tests.         

#8. Mixpanel

Mixpanel is a web personalization software that plays a crucial role in offering A/B testing, multivariate testing, and split testing. Additionally, mixpanel offers an advanced segmentation tool that allows companies to divide users based on historical behaviors, cookies, and events. 

This highly effective tool can gauge the overall performance of all tests by reporting on a large mix of metrics. By integrating this tool with other tools, companies get a ton of integrations with third-party tools such as Shopify and Hubspot. 

Conclusion 

No matter how much extensive research you do, not every marketing campaign will get you positive results. This is why A/B testing is an optimum method for calculating the online promotional and marketing strategies of your application. Through this cyclical testing process, you can get the best-performing version of your app. While A/B testing can be a time-consuming process, its benefits are sufficient to improve the overall user experience and retention of your app. 

A/B testing is the single most effective way to escalate conversion rates. When you see what types of headlines and features your audience responds to, you get a complete insight into who your audience is and what they want.

Guest author: Waqar Ahmed is an extraordinary Digital Marketer and a wonderful addition to Appstirr. His passion for his work and unmatched dedication is the talk of the town. Waqar knows search engine optimization inside out and follows a result-driven approach. Connect with him on Twitter.