Experimentation: Is it worth the hype?

How do businesses find out what works best for their revenue? Are companies providing the best they can in customer experience? What opportunities can companies unearth from existing assets? 

These are some of the many questions that experimentation can answer. Experimentation isn’t just about testing new features; it can also optimize existing practices and processes. With no “one right way” to approach it, discover why experimentation is still worth your business’s resources to test the waters. 

Act on results, not assumptions 

Businesses can get lucky every so often by choosing the right strategy without data, but experimentation results ensure you make informed decisions every time. In addition, experimentation is also critical in keeping your customers happy by uncovering what your customers truly want instead of what you believe they want. 

Still not convinced experimentation is essential to future-proofing your business? Here are four reasons why it needs to be part of your business: 

1. Take current performance to the next level 

Businesses always strive to do better than before, but how do they determine what needs to be improved? With experimentation capabilities including A/B testing and multivariable tests, you can utilize your business assumptions as hypotheses for testing. 

Powerful experimentation tools can generate real-time results for fast, data-driven decision-making, improving the efficiency of what was once considered a lengthy process. Experimentation insights help businesses quickly identify opportunities for improvement in the area tested including customer experience, purchase process, navigation and more. 

Once a statistically significant winner is determined from testing, web traffic can be channelled to the winning variant. When a seamless, revenue-driven digital experience is delivered to your customers, an increase in conversions aligned to your business goals will follow. 

2. Mitigate risks and stay ahead of your industry 

Even if your business has a long product lifecycle, the digital channel has changed the ways many industries operate. Information is now easily accessible and readily available, allowing customers to self-serve from multiple offline and online touchpoints. In other words, staying ahead of market changes at a faster pace can be a challenge. 

As changes and opportunities are constantly presenting themselves, making an informed decision instead of reacting requires timely and accurate data. Experimentation can help you provide relevant insights that validate your decisions or as building blocks for your next strategic move to stay ahead of the competition. 

In addition, experimentation and derived metrics also help you remove the guesswork and vet out ideas and decisions that might not work for your business. While it’s great to have a large pool of ideas to leverage, not all ideas will work. Remember, test, not guess. 

While many companies have attempted to integrate experimentation into their business, it’s still often utilized as a one-off solution. The cadence and frequency of testing can greatly impact the benefits of experimentation on your business. Continuously testing provides relevant, up-to-date insights to keep up with your industry. 

3. Keep customers in the funnel 

New customer acquisition is a critical business goal for many companies. A significant portion of resources is often allocated to get customers into the funnel, side-lining the value that existing customers have on their business. 

However, keeping customers in the funnel is equally, if not more, important as it costs less to retain customers than to acquire new ones. 

Enhance your customers’ lifetime value through a deeper understanding of customers with the help of experimentation. From targeted messaging to personalized offers, customer journey to content relevance, a value-driven approach to testing can provide unparalleled insights about your customers. 

Leverage experimentation and personalization to deliver experiences that meet and exceed customer expectations. Happy customers will stay in your funnel for longer, allowing you to optimize your customer lifecycle. 

4. Drive true business transformation 

When you first embark on your experimentation journey, adding and improving features are key experimentation goals. As you progress to more advanced experiment types, your goals may shift to identifying value-seeking opportunities. 

For some companies, experimentation is part of their DNA. They have cultivated a culture of constant testing and optimization, identifying opportunities in the slightest of changes. These companies are trailblazers as they actively seek out the untapped potential within their industry. 

While discovering the next big thing is always exciting, advanced experimentation can also encompass learning what does not work for your business by process of elimination. This gives you a holistic understanding of your customers and what they want. 

Elevate your business with the world’s fastest experimentation platform 

Run powerful experiments with industry-first features, uncover customer insights and deliver innovative digital experiences with a best-in-class experimentation solution. 

Optimizely Web Experimentation is built for the enterprise, offering the world’s most powerful front-end A/B and multi-page experimentation capabilities that are easy-to-use for various roles. Test, learn and innovate without sacrificing team bandwidth and site speed. 

Want to experience our experimentation solution in helping you try new approaches and deriving meaningful results? Schedule a session with our team of experts today.