Our Frontend Developer, Joe Parkes, talks us through how A/B testing can boost performance and increase sales during the Black Friday period. Read more.

A/B Testing on Black Friday

Black Friday is fast approaching, and this year more than ever, it’s going to be a big event online. Did you know that CRO, and more specifically A/B testing, can boost performance and results during this time? Here we run through the pros and cons of A/B testing on Black Friday.

The Pros

Higher visitors + increased conversion = even higher sales

Provided your baseline conversion rate doesn’t dip too much over the Black Friday period, more visitors means more sales.

The higher the conversion rate on black Friday, the greater the impact because you’re effecting a lot of users.

Traffic spikes on Black Friday only come around once a year, so make the most of it, but only with tests you have great confidence in. Get it wrong and you’ll be missing sales. Hedge against it by only showing the variant to, say, 20% of visitors.

Accurate, confident results

It can often be difficult to reach a reliable conclusion for a test if the numbers behind it are small. You can maximise the test data by running tests when there’s a lot of activity on-site.

The Cons

Risk of getting it wrong

There’s always the risk that new tests might not perform how you want them to, which is why it’s important to use a test that you know works well during Black Friday – otherwise it could impact your site negatively during one of the busiest periods of the year.

Server load time

Lots of visitors on your site may slow things down, and running tests at the same time may slow things down even further. This may be off-putting for customers depending on how slow the pages take to load. If you do choose to run tests on Black Friday, make sure your site is running as smoothly as possible, and if you notice that performance is being impacted, pause some of the tests.

Concluding Thoughts

Events like Black Friday see businesses inundated with deal-hunters, many that have never visited your site before. They know what they want, but why should they buy it from you?

Make sure to get your offer and USPs clear. This is a good opportunity to test how you should be promoting your brand values.

Insights gained by testing are perfect for carrying over to next year, and more so for anytime you have lots of visitors on the site.

Overall, I’d encourage running tests during the Black Friday peak. Provided you manage the risks, there are insights to be gained, sales to be made and lots of new customers to be won!

Interested in finding out more about how specialist CRO services could boost your Black Friday sales? Why not book in a conversation with our experts?