There are all sorts of video tutorials, articles, and how-to guides talking about A/B testing on the internet. As a business owner who understands the benefits of A/B testing to your business, you’ve probably wondered whether to try running A/B tests internally using the information available online.
However, conducting tests internally isn’t something you just wake up and start doing. There are several things you have to put in place in your business first before you consider that option. Here are five reasons why you shouldn’t do in-house A/B testing:
1) A/B Testing Requires Proper Expertise
Setting up and running A/B tests effectively requires different professionals, including test developers and designers, test strategists, test analysts, test managers, and project managers.
One of the main goals for A/B testing is to reduce conversion costs. Generate more leads by paying less. To accomplish that, you need to have the expertise and constant monitor. Teamwork is often required.
That’s why you hear about A/B testing teams. Every successful testing team has members who handle different roles in any test. So, it’s not something that you can learn in a few days after taking an online course or reading articles.
You have to invest heavily in training your employees to equip them with the necessary skills and expertise to conduct tests properly.
2) A/B Testing Requires the Right Systems in Place
Apart from expertise, it would be best to have the proper infrastructure to conduct A/B tests in-house. Some big companies like Facebook have systems that can support continuous internal testing.
However, small businesses can’t put up their systems because of the significant costs involved. If you’re thinking of doing your tests, ask yourself if you have the financial muscle to put the right platforms in place and train your internal team to use the new technology properly.
If not, your business is probably better off hiring an external testing team with existing infrastructure in place.
3) Getting Accurate Results Takes Time
We’re in the digital era where everyone wants to see results instantly. However, when it comes to A/B testing, you need lots of time and patience to see accurate results.
Sometimes, technical glitches occur during testing leading to false-positive results. When that happens, testing teams have to retest several times to get accurate results.
Other times, A/B tests fail, and the testing experts are forced to develop alternative tests to get results. All these things require lots of time and patience.
So, there’s no point in going ahead with in-house testing if you know that you don’t have the time or patience to run tests as many times as required to get accurate results.
4) You Risk Overworking Your Employees and Compromising on Quality
If you’re going to test in-house but don’t have the capital to hire experts who will make your internal team, most of the workload will likely fall on your developers.
They will be responsible for coming up with ideas for testing and planning, and implementing the tests. Sometimes, they may also have to build new tests from scratch.
Remember that the same developers are still expected to fix bugs on the company website or app to ensure that everything runs smoothly. This is a clear case of overworking your employees, and you don’t expect them to perform well in both roles when you do so.
5) You Risk Compromising User Experience
Lastly, there’s also a high risk of compromising user experience during in-house A/B testing. As already mentioned above, technical glitches can occur during testing. This may lead to a reduction in loading speed and malfunctioning of certain features on your website.
In worst cases, your site may even go down for several hours or days due to the glitches. Without an experienced and dedicated in-house testing team to fix the problem as soon as possible, your website user experience will be affected negatively, and you could lose many potential customers as a result.
Wrapping Up
As you can see above, internal A/B testing is not for every business. If you have enough resources to put the suitable systems in place and equip your internal team members with the right skills and the time and patience required to set up and run tests properly, you can go ahead and run tests internally.
But if not, you’re better off hiring an external testing agency to do the tests on your behalf.
