How to Create an A/B Test in VWO?

An A/B test is typically created to test and compare two or more versions of a webpage or an app with the intent of finding out which versions perform better. In an A/B test, the URL of the variations remain the same. To know more about A/B testing in VWO, refer to A/B Testing in VWO.

An A/B test in VWO can be created from TESTING > A/B and involves the following steps:

• Setting up pages for your test 
  This is the first and foremost step in creating your A/B test in VWO. Here, you specify the hypothesis, define the page URLs, and configure the visitor segments for your A/B test. To know more about setting up pages for your test, refer to Setting-up Pages for Your Test in VWO.
  
  
• Creating variations using Visual Editor
  Once you are done with setting up the pages for your A/B test campaign, the next step is to create the variations of your website. The VWO Visual Editor enables you to quickly change the existing web pages and create variations to test. To know more about creating variations, refer to Creating Variations Using Visual Editor in VWO.
  
  
• Adding conversion goals
  Once your variations are ready, you can define the events you want to record a goal conversion in VWO. When a visitor performs the event you defined, VWO will record a goal conversion. For example, you can record goal conversion when users click on a link, visit pages, submit forms, and so on. To know more about adding conversion goals, refer to Adding Conversion Goals in VWO.
  
  
• Finalizing your test 
  The last step in creating your A/B test is to configure some advanced options allocating traffic percentage to the variations, integrating VWO data with third-party products such as Google Analytics, etc. To know more about finalizing your test configurations, refer to Finalizing Your Test in VWO.

Steps to Create an A/B Test in VWO

Prerequisite

You need to add the VWO SmartCode to the webpages you want to test. To learn how to add VWO SmartCode to your website, refer to Configuring SmartCode for your Website. 

Procedure

1. Login to your VWO account.
2. Go to TESTING > A/B.
   The A/B testing dashboard appears.
3. To create a new A/B test, click CREATE.
4. To change the test name, click the edit icon present next to the New Campaign and enter the name for your test.
5. In the Enter URL of the page you want to test field, enter the URL of the webpage you want to test.
   
   NOTE: To include or exclude URLs from the campaign, click the ADVANCED tab next to the URL field. Using this tab, you can also define advanced pattern-matching options to include a broad URL with wildcard entries or a specific URL. To learn about using different URL patterns, refer to Using URL Patterns in VWO.
   
   INFO: In the case of specifying a URL pattern for the campaign, where you wish to exclude a given webpage that matches the pattern criteria, the Exclude URL option comes in handy.
   For example: Let’s say you wish to run a site-wide test on https://vwo.com, but you want to exclude the Contact Us page (https://vwo.com/contact-us/) from it. Then, you need to mention the URLs in the respective fields as follows:
   Included URLs: https://vwo.com*
   Excluded URLs: https://vwo.com/contact-us/
6. From the What hypothesis are you testing? dropdown, select a hypothesis you want to work with. This is an optional step.
   NOTE: If you do not have a hypothesis yet or wish to create a new one, you can do so by clicking on the Create a New Hypothesis option at the bottom of the hypothesis dropdown. To learn more about the hypothesis, refer to Hypothesis in VWO.
7. If you wish to create variations of your test by writing code or want to target your test for a specific set of visitors or load your campaigns on mobile devices, you can use the options present in the More Options section. To know more, refer to Setting-up Pages for Your Test in VWO.
8. Click NEXT.
   The VARIATIONS page appears, and the VWO Visual Editor in a new tab allowing you to modify and save changes on the variation. You can make changes by drag and drop functionality or by writing lines of code. To learn about VWO Editor, refer to VWO Visual Editor.
9. Once you are done making the changes to your variation, click NEXT.
   The VWO Visual Editor gets closed, and the GOALS page appears.
10. To set up goals for your test campaign, click the edit icon present next to the New Goal and enter the name for your goal.
11. From the Goals Type dropdown, select the goal type you want to work with. To know more about different goal types in VWO, refer to Different Types of Conversion Goals in VWO. 
12. In the Include URLs field, specify the operation from the dropdown, and in the field next to it, enter the URL of the webpage where you want to track the conversions. If you wish to exclude a webpage from the goal conversion tracking, use the Exclude URL option to specify the operation and the URL of that page.
    
    NOTE: This field appears based on what you have selected in the Goal Type dropdown.
13. To track another activity in your campaign, click Add Another Goal.
    
    NOTE: If you add multiple goals, you can specify one goal as Primary Goal. VWO declares a variation as a smart decision or a winner based on the primary goal. If you have multiple goals in your test, then the goal directly and exclusively impacted by the changes you make in the test must be chosen as the primary goal. By default, the first goal is considered a Primary Goal.
14. Additionally, at the bottom of the page, the Frequently used goals section is present, which shows the goals you use the most. You can either search or choose from the ones displayed. Selecting a goal from here allows you to reuse the goal code instead of configuring a new one.
    
    NOTE: The goals appear based on the domain where your test is running.
15. Once you are done setting up the conversion goals, click NEXT.
    The OTHERS page appears.
16. To customize the visitor traffic allocation for your campaign, expand the Traffic Split section, and choose the relevant option.
17. If you want to integrate your test with the third-party integrations supported by VWO, expand the Integrate with third-party products section, and choose the desired integration.
18. To configure advanced options for your test, expand the Advanced Options section, and select the desired options. To know the functionality of each option, refer to Finalizing Your Test in VWO.
19. To add notes about something important to your test, click Add Notes, and enter the information.
20. To add labels to your test, click Add Labels.
    
    NOTE: You can use the Labels to filter out the test on the dashboard.
21. Once you are done finalizing the advanced settings for your test, click CREATE.
    Summary of your test appears along with the option to RUN NOW or REVIEW CAMPAIGN AND START LATER. To learn about how to schedule your test in VWO, refer to Scheduling a Campaign in VWO.

Post-requisite

To ensure that the changes you made to the variations are in place and works as expected for your website visitors, preview your variation before starting a test. This can be done using the PREVIEWS tab of your A/B test campaign. Options present in this tab provide a convenient way to quickly check and validate your variations without digging through the entire test settings. To know more about previewing a test, refer to How to Preview Changes for a Test.
Also, to verify if the goals are working or not, refer to Verify Goals setup using Live Previews.

To learn more about the A/B test concepts, refer to our A/B Testing Guide blog.