A/B testing tools are essential for making data-driven decisions about web design.
The most successful websites adapt to customer demands and changing trends. During the design and launch phases, web developers and designers must research which elements are effective and which are not. Testing these designs is a crucial part of this process, and A/B testing is the key method used.
What is A/B testing?
A/B testing is a controlled experiment that shows users slight variations between designs and tracks data to determine which version performs better. It compares the real on-page performance of one version (design A) against another (design B). Typically, version A is the existing design (control), while version B includes a new element.
This testing works by randomly redirecting a portion of the site’s users to either design A or design B. It then monitors website performance and compares user interactions with each version. This information helps you make website improvements based on user responses.
A/B tests can range from minor changes in user interface (UI) elements, like the colour of a call to action (CTA) button, to major changes, like testing two completely different landing pages or checkout sequences.
Why use A/B testing tools?
A/B testing tools help you:
Track data and continuously improve the website. These tools measure changes in key performance metrics over time, allowing for ongoing site design improvements.
Protect your SEO work. You can make changes to a webpage that already ranks in search results without risking your search ranking or being flagged for duplicate content. A/B testing tools use 302 redirects and canonical tags to inform Google that the content duplication is temporary.
Increase conversion rates. A/B test metrics show how effectively your sales funnel moves customers through the site. You can identify and improve the least effective points.
Lower bounce rates. Bounce rates indicate how often visitors leave your website after viewing only one page. A/B test results help identify features that lead to higher bounce rates and suggest improvements.
Types of A/B testing
Standard A/B tests compare differences in a single variable or web element. For example, should the CTA button be blue or green? Should the email campaign title be long or short? Does reducing checkout steps decrease shopping cart abandonment? Comparing data, such as which CTA button gets more clicks, shows which design visitors prefer.
A/B/n tests examine more than two versions of an element simultaneously. For instance, testing a CTA button in blue, green, pink, and purple to see which performs best. These tests are useful if there’s enough traffic to provide robust data for multiple options.
Multipage tests evaluate user flow across a sequence of pages. They help determine whether different styles of copy or design influence user progression through the site.
Multivariate testing evaluates multiple changes in several elements to find the best-performing combination. For example, changing the colour, shape, and placement of a CTA button to see which combination works best. Multivariate testing can be more efficient than standard A/B testing by collecting more user preference data simultaneously, but it requires a large number of visitors for reliable results.
Choosing the right A/B testing tools
The most useful A/B testing tools depend on your needs, including desired outcomes and budget. Clients may prefer tools that are cost-effective or offer straightforward data presentations rather than complex reports. Ensure your chosen tool provides accurate data, reports on all relevant metrics, and integrates seamlessly into the website.
You can often find high-quality A/B testing tools, making it unnecessary to spend much, if anything. Here is a list of 10 useful tools, divided between those best for individuals and small businesses and those best for large businesses.
1. AB Tasty
`
AB Tasty is an AI-powered experimentation platform designed for marketing, product, and engineering teams to enhance user experiences. Its drag-and-drop editor enables the creation of web and feature experiments without needing a code editor or custom programming.
Key Features
AI Capabilities and CDP Integrations: AB Tasty’s AI features and customer data platform (CDP) integrations help target specific website visitor segments. You can use pre-configured templates or create custom segments to ensure that split-tests reach the right users.
Visual Editor: The visual editor allows you to add blocks, call-to-action buttons, and popups to maximise user engagement during tests. It also supports tracking interactions (such as clicks or hovers), adding third-party widgets, and inserting custom scripts as needed.
Server-Side Testing: This feature lets you test two versions of the user interface or experience to see which one customers prefer. The “1 visitor 1 experiment” feature ensures that server-side tests do not overlap, even if multiple experiments target the same page or segment.
Experience Continuity: AB Tasty maintains an intuitive user interface by ensuring all visitors see the same variation of each page from start to finish.
Pricing
AB Tasty uses a quote-based pricing model, so there are no publicly listed prices or plans on its website. The final price depends on your use case, experiment volume, and required features.
Best For
AB Tasty is ideal for AI-powered experimentation.
2. VWO
VWO is an A/B testing tool designed to help product managers with experimentation, website optimisation, and conversion rate optimisation (CRO). It caters to businesses of all sizes with a free version, pay-per-need plans, and enterprise subscriptions.
Key Features
No-Code Editor: VWO simplifies website optimisation and A/B testing with a no-code editor. You can start A/B testing by specifying the hypothesis, selecting the pages to experiment on, and targeting the appropriate visitor segments.
Visual Editor: Create variations using the visual editor to edit text, swap images/videos, remove/hide elements, edit iframe content, modify HTML code, and more. Track goals such as page visits, form submissions, link/element clicks, revenue, and custom conversion criteria.
Server-Side Testing: VWO supports server-side tests and integrates with Google Analytics 4 to measure the impact of experiments. Ensure the Google Analytics code is installed on your website before integrating with VWO.
Pricing
VWO offers one free plan and three paid plans. Paid plans start at $160/month for 10,000 monthly tracked users (MTUs) on the Growth tier, with the Enterprise tier costing upwards of $8,000/month for five million MTUs.
Pricing Tiers:
- Starter: Free version including A/B testing, mobile website testing, unlimited concurrent experiments, bandit tests, visual editor, and more.
- Growth: Starts at $160/month. Includes unlimited goals, unlimited variations, advanced targeting capabilities, chat support, add-ons, and more.
- Pro: Starts at $384/month. Features multivariate testing, multi-device campaigns, cross-domain campaigns, phone support, and more.
- Enterprise: Starts at $854/month. Offers self-hosting, IP/behaviour targeting, API access, single sign-on (SSO), and a dedicated account manager.
Best For
VWO is best suited for businesses of all sizes looking for flexible and comprehensive A/B testing and website optimisation solutions.
3. Optimizely
Optimizely is a digital experience platform designed for companies needing a combination of A/B testing, website personalisation, and data integrations.
Key Features
Full-Stack Experimentation Platform: Optimizely supports A/B testing, multivariate testing, and funnel testing through its visual editor. It also allows custom code options with HTML and JavaScript inserts.
Experiment Setup: Setting up tests involves configuring where the experiment will run, using the visual editor to create variations, adjusting audience settings, allocating traffic to each variation, selecting metrics, and publishing the experiment to gather results.
Visual Editor: The visual editor lets you add, edit, and rearrange page elements, add images, and redirect users to different URLs. It can also edit interactive elements on your website or add pages to multi-page experiments.
Pricing
Optimizely uses a quote-based pricing model with multiple plans tailored to different use cases.
Best For
Optimizely is ideal for teams with specific, narrow use cases.
4. Kameleoon
Kameleoon is a sophisticated A/B testing and AI-powered personalisation platform designed to help brands optimise their digital experiences. This platform is particularly aimed at businesses looking to enhance their customer interactions through precise and effective experimentation.
By leveraging advanced AI capabilities, Kameleoon enables companies to deliver personalised content and offers that resonate with individual users, driving higher engagement and conversion rates.
Whether you are a marketer seeking to improve website performance, a product manager looking to refine user experience, or an IT professional aiming for seamless integration, Kameleoon provides the tools and insights necessary to make data-driven decisions and achieve your business goals.
Key Features
Smart Editor: Kameleoon’s client-side testing is simplified with a smart editor that allows you to edit text, colours, and elements without any coding. For those with coding skills, JavaScript and CSS can be used for further customisation.
Performance: Kameleoon’s proprietary technology delivers higher loads during client-side testing while maintaining double the speed of its competitors. It supports unlimited multivariate testing on both desktop and mobile platforms.
Segmentation: Kameleoon includes over 45 types of built-in segmentation criteria and can integrate with your customer data platform (CDP) for additional segmentation through third-party integrations.
Goal Tracking: Kameleoon offers seven different goals for your experiments:
- Click tracking
- Scroll tracking
- Pageviews
- Number of pages viewed
- Time spent on page
- Retention rate
- Custom goals (requires editing the source code of your page)
Pricing
Kameleoon uses a quote-based pricing model.
Best For
Kameleoon is ideal for brands focused on advanced segmentation and comprehensive goal tracking.
5. Omniconvert
Omniconvert is a marketing optimisation tool designed to assist non-technical users with A/B testing and post-test analysis. It simplifies the process of designing complex tests and reviewing analytics through its user-friendly interface. Additionally, Omniconvert can run experiments across different versions of the same website, such as mobile versus desktop, making it versatile for various testing needs.
Key Features
Split-URL Testing: Omniconvert’s split-URL testing allows you to create variants with different elements and test them against the current landing page to observe changes in visitor behaviour. Advanced targeting settings enable you to enter the URL of the new landing page variant and automatically redirect targeted visitors or users.
Traffic Allocation and Goal Setting: Adjust the traffic allocation slider to determine the percentage of visitors (from 0% to 100%) included in the experiment. Set specific goals like sales, engagement, or bounce rate, and edit goal timeout settings for accurate result measurement.
Comprehensive Analysis: Beyond landing pages, Omniconvert lets you analyse user behaviour in other areas of your app, such as dynamic shopping carts or other sections requiring A/B testing. All experiments allow targeting of specific segments and pages.
Multi-Page Experiments: Use rules like “URL starts with” or “page contains keyword” to run experiments on multiple pages, setting conditions for which pages the experiment should appear on.
Pricing
Omniconvert offers two paid plans, with pricing starting at $273/month when billed annually. The cost scales with the number of monthly page-views, so larger companies with millions of website visitors could pay over $10,000/month.
Pricing Tiers:
- Platform: Starts at $273/month billed annually ($390/month if paid monthly). Includes A/B/n tests, surveys, multi-device testing, and more.
- Enterprise: Priced on a quote basis. Includes a dedicated account manager, data auditing, testing roadmaps, real-time reporting, and more.
Best For
Omniconvert is ideal for mobile split-testing and behavioural tracking.
6. Mojito
Mojito is an open-source split-testing stack optimised for both speed and security. It is designed for users with some technical background and offers unique advantages such as full data ownership and the ability to self-host experiments.
Key Features
Technical Requirements: Mojito is not a no-code solution, requiring basic knowledge of JavaScript or YAML to run experiments. It lacks a WYSIWYG editor, which might be challenging when creating test variants. However, it compensates with complete data ownership, a rarity in modern tech stacks.
Component Setup: To use Mojito, you need to set up three components:
- Mojito JS Delivery: Ensures users see the correct experiments.
- Mojito Snowplow Storage: Manages data collection and modelling.
- Mojito R Analytics: Handles metric reporting.
Custom Reporting: While Mojito does not have a built-in analytics dashboard, it allows you to build custom HTML reports from the metrics stored in your data warehouse.
Performance: Because Mojito is served from your domain and consumes fewer resources than typical SaaS tools, it can enhance page load times.
Pricing
Mojito is free to use and supports self-hosted experiments, offering a cost-effective alternative to other server-side testing tools.
Best For
Mojito is ideal for users who prefer self-hosted experiments and are looking to optimise page load speeds.
7. Unleash
Unleash is an open-source feature flagging solution targeted at developers, small teams, and enterprise organisations. It offers robust functionality despite being free for self-hosted versions, with cloud-hosted plans available for a fee.
Key Features
Developer-Focused: Unleash is designed to empower developers with powerful feature flagging capabilities. It supports feature toggles as the primary mechanism for A/B testing, allowing users to run experiments and collect data to measure their impact.
Experimentation: While feature toggles support A/B testing, setting up and tracking impression data requires some coding knowledge and API usage. However, once configured, results data can be streamed to third-party analytics providers like Google Analytics.
Multivariate Testing: Although A/B tests are supported, Unleash does not provide the same level of robustness as multivariate tests available in tools like Google optimise.
Pricing
Unleash offers a free open-source version for self-hosting experiments. It also provides two paid plans:
- Pro: Starts at $80/month for five team members, with options to expand up to 20 seats at an additional $15/month per seat.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing with flexible deployment options (cloud-hosted or self-hosted), custom roles, and private instance deployment.
Best For
Unleash is best suited for developers looking for a feature flagging solution that supports A/B testing and experimentation, particularly those who prefer self-hosted setups and want robust control over their feature management processes.
8. Zoho PageSense
Zoho PageSense stands as a robust conversion optimisation and personalisation platform tailored for businesses in search of a comprehensive solution for managing user interactions across their digital properties.
Beyond its core functionality, Zoho PageSense empowers users with a suite of tools designed to enhance engagement and drive conversions efficiently.
Whether you’re aiming to refine user experiences through A/B testing, optimise landing pages effortlessly with its no-code editor, or track a wide array of performance metrics, Zoho PageSense provides intuitive features that streamline the entire process from setup to analysis.
Key Features
A/B Testing: Zoho PageSense facilitates A/B testing of landing pages using its intuitive no-code editor. The visual editor simplifies the setup, execution, and review of A/B tests. It supports tracking various goal types such as page-views, link/element clicks, revenue, time on page, and custom events.
Advanced Targeting: The platform offers advanced targeting settings where you can specify the percentage of visitors included in experiments, segment traffic by source, and target users based on device type.
URL Split-Testing: Alternatively, you can conduct split-tests between two pages with different URLs to evaluate the impact of larger changes.
Analytics Dashboards: Zoho PageSense provides comprehensive analytics dashboards that compare engagement, conversion rates, time on page, and other metrics between the original page and its variations, aiding in decision-making.
Pricing
Zoho PageSense offers three paid plans without a free version:
- Analyze: Starts at $12/month for 10,000 monthly visitors, includes web analytics, funnels, heat-maps, recordings, and six-month data retention.
- Engage: Starts at $18/month, includes polls, push notifications, popups, banners, supports up to three projects, and includes six-month data retention.
- optimise: Starts at $49/month (or $30/month annually) and includes A/B testing, split-testing, personalisation features, supports up to 10 projects, and offers 12-month data retention.
Best For
Zoho PageSense is particularly suitable for early-stage startups seeking affordable solutions to optimise and personalise their website user experiences.
9. Statsig
Statsig is a feature management and experimentation platform designed specifically for product teams aiming to accelerate their experimentation capabilities. It offers robust tools that facilitate the creation, iteration, and collaboration throughout the A/B testing process.
Key Features
Statsig’s A/B testing tool enables users to create multiple variants within a single experiment. You can select specific metrics to validate hypotheses and ensure accurate measurement of experiment outcomes. The platform also provides functionality to exclude users who are already engaged in other experiments, preventing overlap and maintaining experimental integrity.
Statsig offers flexibility with two types of experiments:
- User-level Experiments: These experiments randomise users based on their unique user IDs, exposing them to different A/B testing variants.
- Device-level Experiments: Useful in scenarios where user identity cannot be utilised for randomisation. Device-level experiments assign participants based on stable device IDs selected during experiment setup.
Pricing
Statsig provides a range of plans to accommodate different needs:
- Developer Plan: Free version with unlimited team seats, feature flags, A/B/n testing, user and device targeting, cross-team collaboration, and more.
- Pro Plan: Starts at $150/month, offering advanced analytics, rollout alerts, user reviews, multi-armed bandit tests, data warehouse imports, and additional features.
- Enterprise Plan: Custom annual pricing with features like API exporting, single sign-on (SSO), priority support, and HIPAA-eligibility.
- Warehouse Native Plan: On-site deployment option with usage-based annual pricing, unlimited team seats, SLA, SSO, and HIPAA-eligibility.
Best For
Statsig is ideal for product teams looking to conduct high-velocity experimentation with advanced capabilities in feature management and A/B testing.
10. Adobe Target
Adobe Target is an AI-powered testing tool renowned for its comprehensive A/B testing and multivariate testing capabilities across various channels. Its advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms simplify the process of personalising and optimising tests with minimal technical expertise required.
Key Features
- AI-powered A/B testing and multivariate testing at scale.
- Cross-channel user profiles ensure consistent testing experiences across mobile and desktop platforms.
- Advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms simplify the personalisation of multivariate tests with minimal technical expertise.
- Rules-based and AI-powered personalisation options allow customisation based on operating system, screen size, geolocation, and user behaviour patterns.
- Adobe Sensei automates mobile experience personalisation using machine learning, ensuring optimised user experiences across all devices.
Pricing
Adobe Target operates on a quote-based pricing model, necessitating users to provide details such as country, department, and primary use case to obtain a customised pricing quote directly from Adobe.
Best For
Adobe Target is ideal for organisations seeking to conduct sophisticated cross-channel experimentation and personalisation. It caters well to businesses that prioritise seamless user experiences across different devices and channels, leveraging advanced AI capabilities for optimised testing outcomes.