Artificial Intelligence Over A/B Testing, Peter wants a food delivery service app created and he logins into a website offering app development services. A chatbot appears and answers his queries and schedules an appointment for him to meet the project manager. A mail is sent to him by the company to confirm the meeting time. Using the smart reply option, he responds, “Yes, I am available!”
Before responding to the email, he comes across a nudging reminder which catches his attention towards a mail which he didn’t respond from the last three days.
All the terms underlined above depict real life applications of artificial intelligence. It’s everywhere around us and making things around us smart and intelligent for our convenience. Artificial Intelligence is one of the up-to-the-minute technologies that conjoins world with devices. It improves communications between devices and humans. Puzzled? Read on.
So, what’s artificial intelligence or AI all about?
Yes, artificial intelligence is the latest innovation which makes machines capable of receiving information and acting accordingly. It’s about making machines smarter than before. To be specific artificial intelligence, also called as AI, is that branch of computer science which deals with building smart machines which can perform tasks which usually require human intelligence to accomplish. AI is the effort to instill human intellect into machines.
- Chatbots are the best example of artificial intelligence. Almost all websites use them to answer some of the general questions that viewers may have. For a broader perspective on how AI is driving better customer and digital experiences, check out our article on Artificial Intelligence Driving Better CX and DX.
- Smart Reply – This feature is offered by Gmail wherein readymade chunks of text are presented to email viewers to help them quickly respond to an email by just clicking on the chunk of text.
- Nudging reminder- This is also an apt use of AI by Gmail wherein a person will be reminded about not responding or reading an email for three days with a bold text near that specific mail.
I’m sure these examples of AI would have certainly made it clear to you the use of this most recent tech development.
- What is A/B Testing?
Hundreds of experiments and/or processes are performed by businesses to understand and maximize the experience of their potential customers. A/B testing is one of the methods to know user’s likes and inclinations that coerce them buy from a business. It’s about showing different versions of a web page to different set of visitors at the same time and drawing their reactions.
With this method, the users are not even aware that they are being tested upon and the fair results are derived by the business to know which version converts better.
- Why Businesses use A/B Testing?
In the digital world, the number of website visitors you have translates into the number of opportunities you have to acquire new customers. It is your conversion funnel that determines if your website gets substantial traffic and if it converts a greater number of visitors.
Businesses are more concerned about conversions rather than just visitors. Your conversion funnel should be fully optimized to have a high conversion rate.
A/B testing presents one of the most important ways to optimize your website’s funnel.
As mentioned above, when two group of visitors are presented with two versions of a webpage which are almost the same, with very little variance, and their reactions are recorded, that version which gives the highest conversions is the one which wins.
This is because it has the potential to help you optimize your website for higher conversions. This is how A/B testing impacts business decisions.
Based on the results of A/B testing, businesses may make a number of decisions.
Let’s now come to our main point which revolves around why AI has precedence over A/B testing.
All the demerits of A/B testing raise reasonable points for businesses to go for AI.
- Artificial Intelligence and Conversions:
AI development and consulting company can help improve a business enhance optimization by enabling self-optimization of website, ads, and other online resources to optimize, without any human effort, in real-time. For insights into how AI can benefit recruitment processes, see our article on AI Applicant Tracking Systems.
Based on the actions taken up by individual visitors on a website, different variations are served to unique users by an Artificial Intelligence powered software.
Now that we know how A/B testing and AI empower conversions, let’s understand why AI is better than A/B testing.
1. AI is time-efficient
When it comes to AI, it is much less time consuming than A/B testing. With the latter if you wish to test out a variety of variables, you need to wait for a long time for the conclusive result of one test before you proceed with the next one. A/B testing needs you to have substantial size of visitors for each test so that you can derive meaningful results. With AI all the tasks and test are performed by the AI powered software. What you are left with is ample time and resources to focus on other aspects of your marketing strategy.
2. AI Performs Predictive Analysis
A/B testing relies greatly on past preferences, behaviors and patterns of similar individuals. It depicts the likes or inclinations of the past. The same may not hold true in the coming days. On the contrary, Artificial Intelligence dynamically delivers customized content on the basis of the user behaviors. It works in real-time. AI considers various factors including demographics, status, past behaviour to dynamically present various versions of your website to various groups of users. In digital marketing, AI provides correct messages at the correct time. This way it can predict future customer needs. For more on how AI tools can enhance content quality, read AI Tools for Improving Content Quality.
3. AI Can Include More Than One Variable at a Time
AI is vast in the sense that it can help a business test several variables at a time whereas with A/B testing only a single variable can be tested at a given point of time.
With AI you can experiment a variety of different variables. For instance, instead of just testing A versus B, you can introduce further elements like C, D, E, F, and G into the equation and try out various combinations to know which one converts well. Various combinations of these variables are easy with machine learning algorithms which quickly collect data and present the best variation to each individual user.
4. AI helps optimize Your Entire Sales Funnel
With AI you can optimize your whole sales funnel that consists of emails, ads, landing page and various other assets which is not possible in case of A/B testing. In case of the latter, you can focus your efforts on only one asset or web page at a time. However, a sales funnel may comprise of variety of other elements such as ads, emails, CTAs, etc. It may be very time-consuming to conduct A/B test for all the individual elements and may demand a great deal of resources. For an example of how AI can enhance robotics, check out AI and Machine Learning Improving Robotics.
With AI, your optimization efforts are maximized by allowing each user to follow their path through the funnel. The elements are tested and optimized on the go. This leads to overall optimization of the entire sales funnel rather than a single element impacting a single user.
Simply put, as AI can save a great deal of time and resources, test more than one variable at a time, conduct predictive analysis, and help optimize the entire sales funnel at a time it is clear why AI should be opted in place of A/B testing. Artificial Intelligence is a great tool via which you can not only optimize conversion rates but also can calculate what will be preferred more by the customers in the coming time.
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For insights on how AI is shaping future growth in different regions, read AI Pushing Singapore’s Future Growth.
