Author: John Hughes

Article

Jan 7, 2026
5min read

How Marketing Teams Can Scale With AI

John Hughes

John Hughes

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Until recently, A/B testing has often been a time-consuming process for marketing teams and involved a certain amount of guesswork. But by integrating AI tools into the testing process, brands can iterate at scale, analyze data fast, and drive customer engagement like never before.

Join the AI revolution

If you think AI now seems to be everywhere, you’re probably right. It’s safe to say that AI is currently creating seismic upheaval in the marketing technology landscape. One of the chief reasons for this is AIs ability to analyze large amounts of data incredibly quickly and find patterns in that data. And that’s something that happens to make it ideal for A/B testing.

The use of AI agents for A/B testing is literally a gamechanger for marketing teams, making it much easier to scale their testing and experimentation programs. Coming up with ideas to test, designing those tests, analyzing results, and implementing changes can take hours of your time. But a lot of this can be accomplished in a matter of clicks with AI, leaving your team more time to focus on high-level tasks.

This lets you to accelerate your testing program to a scale that is literally not humanly possible. And because everything AI does is driven by hard data, it also takes the guesswork out of testing and experimentation. It gives you the confidence that everything from generating ideas to analyzing reports is based on verifiable visitor trends on your website. It can also provide you with valuable insights that a human might otherwise miss.

All of this opens up a world of enhanced personalization and continuous optimization that marketers have until recently only been able to dream about. AI agents are now set to redefine A/B testing and drive unprecedented growth for those that make them part of their testing program.

Introducing Evi, your evidence-based marketing agent

Evi is AB Tasty’s AI-powered marketing agent designed for evidence-based decision making. It transforms complex data into clear, actionable strategies for repeatable, measurable results, ensuring every step you take is grounded in evidence.

Evi helps brands scale their experimentation by facilitating fast test launching without running out of ideas. But Evi is also designed to enhance human creativity and collaboration, not to replace them. Instead, Evi empowers marketing teams, helping them move from ideas to iteration quickly and confidently.

With Evi, your team can:

  • Greatly accelerate the testing process, speeding up your workflow with automated code generation and content suggestions
  • Extract deeper insights, all driven by actual website data and feedback using built-in AI analysis
  • Generate and prioritize test ideas based on your objectives and recent activity patterns

But don’t just take our word for it. Over 1,000 brands are already using Evi to constantly scale their testing and experimentation programs, resulting in noticeably accelerated campaign performance. By using Evi, they’ve reported:

  • 33% more campaigns created
  • 53% more campaigns launched
  • 73% faster experimentation

The pressure now on companies to integrate AI into their testing programs can mean they end up with multiple AI tools for specific tasks with varying degrees of compatibility. By using Evi across your entire testing workflow, you guarantee the same consistent level of quality, the same context, and the same great results. 

Features that transform how you test, learn, and grow

Evi’s six different AI agents will help you test with confidence, learn faster, and understand your users better than ever before.

Evi Ideas

Unsure about what you should be testing next? Evi Ideas will scan pages of your website and generate ideas for new tests based on hard data that will actually impact your testing roadmap.

Evi Hypothesize

Struggling to craft a strong hypothesis for your experiments? Evi Hypothesize uses an automated checklist of essential elements to help you turn fuzzy thoughts into a sharp, well-structured hypothesis that has clear objectives.

Evi Content

Still waiting for the development team to build your experiment? Evi Content will let you turn your vision into reality in just a few clicks. No matter how good you are at coding, Evi Content will let you instantly transform concepts into actual buildable experiments.

Evi Analysis

Tired of spending hours staring at colorful charts and wondering what they all mean? Evi Analysis will analyze your campaign data and deliver clear, actionable insights. It highlights winning variations and breaks down why they drive transactions so you can feel confident in your next move.

Evi Feedback

Feel like you’re drowning in feedback but don’t know what to do with it all? Evi Feedback takes the heavy lifting out of Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) campaigns. It analyses customer responses right within your reports, quickly identifying key themes and sentiment trends.

Evi Explore

Want to know if your tests will actually drive revenue? Evi Explore, powered by our own patented metric, RevenueIQ, lets you see what each test is worth before you launch. This gives you the confidence to make faster, more profitable decisions based on real revenue projections, rather than simply relying on traditional metrics like conversion rate or average order value (AOV).

Finally, AI you can trust

And you can rest assured that Evi only uses the right data for the right task. This guarantees that your data is secure, transparent, and under your control at all times.

  • Proprietary intelligence: Evi is exclusively trained on AB Tasty’s proprietary data. This ensures that it delivers relevant, experiment-ready outputs.
  • Your inputs are yours and yours alone: Key features like Evi Ideas and Evi Content only process the prompts and screenshots that you supply, ensuring they remain private.
  • Secure by design: The Evi Analysis feature runs entirely on AB Tasty’s own servers. No data is sent to external services.

Evi from AB Tasty grounds every step in evidence, notices what you don’t, and never gets it wrong, transforming how you optimize the digital experience.

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Article

Dec 17, 2025
7min read

The Digital Upgrade: How Experimentation Drives Airline Revenue

John Hughes

John Hughes

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Booking a flight is an exercise in high-stakes decision-making. For the customer, it’s a significant purchase filled with dozens of micro-decisions, from dates and times to seat selection and baggage allowances. For an airline, it’s a complex, multi-stage transaction where the smallest point of friction can lead to an abandoned booking and a substantial loss of revenue. Unlike a simple e-commerce purchase, the path from searching for a flight to completing a booking is a long-haul journey in itself.

In this environment, relying on assumptions is a recipe for failure. The color of a CTA button, the order of ancillary services, or the way fees are presented can have an outsized impact on conversion rates. This is why a culture of systematic experimentation isn’t just a “nice-to-have” for airlines; it’s the most effective way to navigate the complexities of the user journey, de-risk critical design decisions, and build a digital experience that turns lookers into bookers, and bookers into loyal customers. It’s about replacing guesswork with the certainty of data, ensuring every change is a step toward a smoother, more profitable customer experience.

The high-friction world of airline UX

An airline website is not a typical e-commerce store. It’s a sophisticated platform balancing user needs, complex business rules, and ancillary revenue goals. A seamless User Experience (UX) here requires a deep understanding of the unique pressures and priorities of the travel booker. Key considerations include:

  • Clarity in search and filtering: The journey begins with a search. Users need to effortlessly filter by dates, stops, airlines, and times. As Spanish travel agency Iberojet discovered, even the initial presentation of search options can have a major impact. They questioned the order of their homepage tabs: “Holiday Packages” vs. “Travel Circuits and Long-Distance Trips.” By running a simple A/B test that swapped the order based on user browsing history, they increased clicks on the “Search” button by a staggering 25%. This shows that getting the very first interaction right is critical.
  • Transparency in pricing: Nothing erodes trust faster than hidden fees. A modern airline UX presents all costs—from baggage fees to seat selection charges—in a clear and upfront manner. The goal isn’t to hide the costs, but to integrate them so seamlessly into the flow that the user feels informed, not ambushed.
  • A mobile-first imperative: More and more travelers are booking complex trips entirely on their mobile devices. This demands a responsive, thumb-friendly design where every step, from entering passenger details to selecting a seat on a detailed map, is intuitive on a small screen.
  • Intuitive ancillary upsells: Baggage options, seat upgrades, and travel insurance are crucial revenue drivers. However, if presented aggressively or confusingly, they become a major point of friction. The best experiences integrate these upsells as helpful, well-timed suggestions rather than mandatory hurdles. A cluttered page that forces users to opt-out of multiple insurance offers feels frustrating, whereas a clean interface that clearly explains baggage options at the right moment feels helpful.

De-risking design with systematic experimentation

Every proposed change to a booking flow is a hypothesis. Does this new layout simplify seat selection? Does this revised copy clarify baggage rules? Experimentation is the process of testing these hypotheses with real users before committing to a full rollout.

A/B testing

This is the workhorse of experimentation. It involves testing one change at a time (e.g., a green “Book Now” button vs. a blue one) to see which performs better against a specific goal, like booking completion rate. It’s simple, direct, and provides clear answers to specific questions. A great example from the vacation package industry comes from Smartbox. They hypothesized that a more prominent “Add to Cart” button would drive more sales. By testing a bright pink CTA against their original aqua one, they saw a 16% increase in clicks. The principle is the same for airlines: small visual changes can yield significant results.

Multivariate testing

This approach allows you to test multiple changes at once. For example, you could simultaneously test two different headlines, three different banner images, and two different CTA buttons to see which combination performs best. This is ideal for redesigning a complex section, like the ancillary services page, where multiple elements interact. Its power lies in not only identifying the best-performing individual elements but also understanding how they influence one another.

Personalization experiments

Not all travelers are the same. A frequent flyer logged into their loyalty account has different needs than a first-time visitor booking a family vacation. Personalization involves tailoring the experience to different user segments. For example, Best Western Hotels & Resorts ran a personalization campaign targeting anonymous visitors looking for a multi-night stay. By showing them a pop-up with a special offer available only to loyalty members, they increased program sign-ups by 12%. Airlines can use the same logic to offer targeted promotions to frequent flyers, pre-fill information for logged-in users, or simplify the interface for new customers.

Navigating the challenges of airline experimentation

While incredibly valuable, running experiments on a high-traffic airline website comes with its own set of challenges:

  • Minimizing disruption: A poorly implemented test can introduce bugs or slow down the site, directly impacting revenue. Rigorous quality assurance and phased rollouts are essential to avoid disrupting the booking process for thousands of users.
  • Complex technical environment: Airline websites are often a web of internal systems, third-party APIs (for everything from payment to loyalty programs), and global distribution systems. Implementing a test that touches multiple systems requires careful planning and deep technical expertise. A test on the seat selection page, for instance, might rely on an external API for the seat map; if that API is slow, it could invalidate the test results.
  • Measuring long-term impact: While it’s easy to measure the immediate impact of a test on bookings, measuring its effect on long-term loyalty or repeat business is more difficult. This requires a mature analytics setup and a commitment to tracking user cohorts over time to see if a winning variation today leads to more valuable customers tomorrow.

Recommendations: Building a culture of continuous improvement

To successfully navigate the turbulence of the online travel market, airlines should treat their website not as a static brochure, but as a dynamic product that is always evolving.

  1. Embrace an ongoing process: Experimentation should not be a one-off project. It’s an iterative, continuous loop of hypothesizing, testing, learning, and improving. The insights from one test should fuel the ideas for the next, creating a powerful engine for growth.
  2. Reduce guesswork with data: Use data-driven insights to inform every UX decision, from the grand redesigns down to the smallest copy change. A powerful example of this comes from Evolve Vacation Rental. By analyzing user intent from different traffic sources, they tested changing a CTA from “Start for Free” to “See if You Qualify.” This simple, intent-aligned copy change drove a 161% increase in conversions, demonstrating the immense impact of data-driven copywriting.
  3. Balance optimization with brand: While optimizing for conversion is critical, it must be balanced with the airline’s brand promise and regulatory requirements. The goal is a journey that is not only efficient but also reassuring, trustworthy, and compliant.

By adopting a disciplined, data-driven approach to UX and experimentation, airlines can move beyond simply selling tickets. They can design digital journeys that are smoother, more intuitive, and build the kind of trust that keeps passengers coming back.

Ready to find your better? If you’re looking to build a data-driven experimentation program that drives revenue and builds customer trust, we’re here to help. Talk to one of our experts today to start your journey.

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Article

Nov 19, 2025
6min read

From Clicks to Conversations: The AI Search Era’s Impact on E-Commerce & Travel

John Hughes

John Hughes

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For two decades, the digital playbook has been clear: get clicks. Whether you’re selling sneakers or flights, success has been a game of climbing search rankings, optimizing landing pages, and guiding users through a funnel you meticulously built on your own website. That predictable path from a Google search to your checkout page is now being fundamentally rerouted.

The era of AI-driven discovery is here. Tools like Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews, and ChatGPT are shifting user behavior from searching to asking. Instead of a list of blue links, users get a direct answer, a curated summary, or a complete travel itinerary. Now, with AI models integrating “buy” functionality, the journey is being short-circuited entirely. The conversation itself is becoming the point of sale.

This isn’t just another channel to manage; it’s a paradigm shift that challenges the core assumptions of digital marketing. For e-commerce and travel brands, the question isn’t just “how do we adapt?” but “what are we adapting to?” The truth is, nobody has all the answers yet. What follows isn’t a playbook, because a playbook doesn’t exist. It’s a pragmatic look at the shifts we’re seeing, how we might start to measure this new world, and why a culture of experimentation has never been more critical.

The new reality: From search to answers 

The fundamental change is the introduction of a powerful new middle layer between a user’s intent and a brand’s website. Large language models (LLMs) are becoming expert synthesizers. A user asking, “What are the best running shoes for marathon training under $150?” no longer gets ten articles to read. They get a direct, compiled answer listing three specific models with summarized reviews and maybe a link.

This is the great unbundling of the search results page. The user gets their answer without ever needing to visit multiple sites to compare and contrast. And with platforms like ChatGPT embedding purchasing capabilities, that final step—the transaction—can happen right there in the chat interface. The website, once the center of the customer journey, risks becoming a simple fulfillment endpoint or, in some cases, being skipped entirely.

E-Commerce impact: When the storefront shrinks to a chat window

For e-commerce brands, this shift feels personal. The product detail page (PDP) is sacred ground. It’s a carefully crafted space for storytelling, cross-sells, and brand building. When discovery and comparison happen inside an AI, that ground vanishes.

The immediate impacts are clear:

  • A drop in direct traffic: Fewer users will land directly on product or category pages, making it harder to guide them through a curated experience.
  • The conversion conundrum: If a sale is initiated in a chat and fulfilled on your site (or via an API), how do you attribute it? Traditional last-click models become obsolete.
  • Lost opportunities: The spontaneous cross-sell (“Customers also bought…”) or the carefully placed upsell becomes much harder when you don’t own the interface.

Success in this new ecosystem may hinge on a brand’s ability to be “AI-friendly.” This isn’t about keywords; it’s about data. The brands most likely to be recommended by an LLM will be those with impeccable, highly structured product data that the AI can easily parse and trust. Your product catalog becomes your new landing page.

Travel’s new tour guide: The AI agent

The travel industry is perhaps even more exposed to this disruption. An LLM is, in effect, the ultimate travel agent. A single prompt like, “Plan a 5-day family-friendly trip to Lisbon in May, staying near the city center with a budget of $2,000,” can generate a complete itinerary with hotel options, flight suggestions, and activity booking links.

Brands risk being reduced to a single line item in an AI-generated plan. The key challenges are:

  • Disintermediation: If the AI presents three hotel options that all meet the user’s criteria, the brand’s own marketing and website become secondary to the AI’s curation.
  • Data accuracy is everything: Travel is time-sensitive. An AI won’t recommend a hotel or flight if it can’t confidently access real-time availability, accurate pricing, and clear policies. Outdated or poorly structured data is a death sentence.
  • Commoditization: Without the ability to showcase a unique brand experience on their own site, hotels and airlines risk being chosen on price and basic features alone.

For travel, the path forward requires a radical focus on the quality and accessibility of data. Think rich, structured, and instantly available information that makes your offering the easiest and most reliable choice for an AI to recommend.

Attribution in the age of answers

So, how do we measure success when clicks and rankings no longer tell the whole story? This is where the uncertainty is most palpable. The new platforms are largely opaque, and a new set of metrics is still emerging.

The conversation is shifting from “how did they find our site?” to “are we part of the AI’s conversation?” Potential new measures might include:

  • Mentions and citations: Tracking how often your brand or products are cited as answers to relevant queries.
  • Branded query lift: An increase in users asking for your brand by name (“Find me Nike running shoes”) becomes a powerful indicator of success.
  • Referral attribution: As partnerships form, tracking referrals directly from AI platforms will be crucial, though likely limited to their chosen partners.

For now, tracking remains experimental, but some signals are becoming clearer. We can now see referral traffic from sources like chat.openai.com and perplexity.ai in analytics. However, traffic from Google’s AI Overviews is currently blended with traditional organic search, making it difficult to isolate. This means a complete picture is still impossible, requiring a combination of brand monitoring and deep analysis of the referral data we can get.

Can brands catch up? The case for test-and-learn

This new search paradigm is full of unknowns, but waiting for a settled playbook isn’t a strategy. The only viable posture is a disciplined, test-and-learn mindset. The goal is to make your brand as legible, authoritative, and accessible to AI as possible, preparing you for whatever comes next.

Potential strategies include:

  • Mastering structured data: Implementing comprehensive schema markup across your site is no longer optional. It’s the cost of entry.
  • Creating AI-friendly content: Develop clear, factual, and easily digestible content that directly answers common customer questions, making it prime material for an LLM to cite.
  • Investing in brand and loyalty: When users are overwhelmed with AI-curated choices, a trusted brand name becomes a powerful shortcut. Loyalty programs and excellent customer experiences will be more important than ever.
  • Exploring API integrations: For larger brands, pursuing direct API integrations with major chat platforms could be a way to ensure your inventory and data are seamlessly included in their results.

The honest truth is that this ecosystem is still being built, and the rules are changing in real-time. The brands best positioned to navigate this shift won’t be the ones who guess the future correctly, but those who build a culture of rapid experimentation. The only question is, what will you try next?

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Article

Nov 12, 2025
6min read

Travel on the Go: Mobile Experience Lessons That Build Consumer Confidence

John Hughes

John Hughes

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We’ve all been there. Sprawled on the couch, phone in hand, dreaming up the perfect getaway. You scroll through stunning destinations, compare flight times, and find a hotel that looks just right. It’s exciting. It’s inspiring. And then… you put your phone down, deciding you’ll book it later on your laptop.

Sound familiar? It’s a story playing out millions of times a day.

This jump from mobile browsing to desktop booking is more than just a common habit; it’s a multi-billion dollar friction point for the travel industry. Your customers are dreaming on the go, but they’re hesitating to commit. The good news? This isn’t a dead end. It’s an opportunity. It’s a chance to turn that hesitation into confidence and those browsers into bookers, right where they are.

Let’s dive into what’s holding mobile travel back and how your team can start building a better, more trusted experience. Because good things happen to those who change.

Discover our Travel Essentials Kit to unpack 10 game-changing strategies that turn your digital experience into the smoothest journey from search to check-in.

The mobile paradox in travel 

The numbers tell a fascinating story. Mobile devices are the undisputed engine of discovery in the travel sector, driving the lion’s share of online traffic. According to industry analysis from Zoftify, mobile is responsible for approximately 60% of all visits to travel websites. Yet, research from TravelPerk shows that despite accounting for the majority of browsing sessions, mobile devices represent a much smaller fraction of actual sales, with an estimated 60% of all bookings still coming from desktops.

That’s a huge gap between interest and action. While users love the convenience of browsing on their phones, there’s a clear disconnect when it comes time to pull out a credit card. This isn’t just a missed opportunity; it’s a signal that the mobile experience isn’t meeting the moment. Customers are ready to be inspired on mobile, but they aren’t yet convinced it’s the best place to make a high-stakes purchase. The challenge for your team is to bridge that gap.

digital interactions of the modern traveler

Trust and performance: barriers to mobile conversion 

So, what’s causing this hesitation? It boils down to two critical factors: performance and trust. When you’re asking a user to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars, their confidence in your platform has to be absolute.

The data reveals where those cracks appear. According to research from Quantum Metric, it’s no wonder consumers have trust issues: 59% have experienced slow performance, 49% have had payment failures, and 43% have dealt with app crashes. On top of that, 45% have encountered bugs, causing half of them to abandon what they were doing. Each hiccup erodes trust. It plants a seed of doubt that asks, “If the site can’t even load properly, can I trust it with my booking?” This feeling is backed by the numbers; data reported by Navan indicates that only 25% of consumers feel fully confident completing a travel booking on their mobile device. That’s the core of the challenge. It’s not about a lack of desire, it’s about a lack of confidence.

consumers have mobile trust issues

UX moves that boost confidence and usability 

Building confidence doesn’t require a complete overhaul. It starts with smart, user-centric design choices that make the experience feel seamless and secure. Every smooth interaction is a small deposit in the user’s trust bank.

Here’s where your team can start making an immediate impact:

  • Respect the thumb-zone: We navigate our phones with our thumbs. Placing key calls-to-action (CTAs) and navigation elements at the bottom of the screen makes them easy to reach and reduces physical effort. It’s a small change that makes your app feel instantly more intuitive.
  • Simplify every form: No one enjoys typing on a small screen. Keep your forms lean by removing non-essential fields. Enable guest checkout to remove registration barriers, use progress indicators on multi-step forms, and provide inline validation so users can fix errors in real-time.
  • Keep essentials above the fold: When a user lands on a mobile page, the most critical information and the primary CTA should be immediately visible without scrolling. This orients them instantly and shows them exactly what to do next.

Experimentation ideas specific to travel mobile 

Understanding best practices is one thing. Knowing what works for your audience is where the real progress happens. This is where you move from fixing problems to finding your unique better. It’s time to embrace a mindset of “trial and better.”

Here are a few bold ideas to get your team started:

Test your navigation

Is a traditional hamburger menu really the best fit, or would a bottom navigation bar increase engagement with key sections? Run an A/B test to see which style helps your users find what they need faster.

Dial up the trust signals

Experiment with the placement and design of security badges and payment logos (Visa, PayPal, etc.) in your checkout flow. Does adding a “Secure Checkout” lock icon next to the “Book Now” button increase conversions? Let the data decide.

Optimize for perceived performance. 

A content-heavy page doesn’t have to be a slow page. Experiment with technical solutions like progressive image loading for your visuals. This method loads a placeholder image first that sharpens as it fully loads, delivering content to the user more quickly. This improves actual load performance and keeps users engaged from the moment they land.

Run micro-experiments on upsells

The mobile booking flow is a delicate dance. A poorly timed upsell for baggage or a seat upgrade can feel disruptive. Test different triggers for these offers. Do they perform better when presented right after flight selection, or on the final confirmation page?

Bridging browsing to booking, from insight to action 

The gap between mobile traffic and mobile conversion isn’t an unsolvable problem. It’s a series of smaller challenges waiting for creative solutions. By using benchmark data, you can identify your users’ biggest pain points and prioritize where to focus your efforts first.

Building a culture of iterative testing is the key. Small wins add up, creating a powerful momentum that continuously improves the user experience. As you monitor shifts in your mobile conversion rates and order values, you’re not just watching metrics. You’re seeing the direct result of your team’s courage to try, learn, and find what’s better.

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Article

Nov 4, 2025
5min read

Diving into Experimentation: How On The Beach Perfected Personalized Messaging 

John Hughes

John Hughes

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How can you get your website to deliver different messages that resonate with different users? That was the challenge faced by UK travel company, On The Beach. They asked AB Tasty to help them speak to their different customer segments, leveraging data-driven decision-making to get more beaches to more people.

Founded in 2004, On The Beach is one of the UK’s largest online package holiday retailers, serving more than 1.7 million customers every year. Known for their colorful and dynamic brand image, they’ve built their reputation on providing affordable, hassle-free beach holiday experiences at a wide range of destinations. They’ve also recently branched out into offering city breaks around the world.

By promoting transparency, flexibility, and excellent customer service, On The Beach has established itself as one of the most trusted brands in the UK travel industry. You can find out more in our case study On The Beach Tests the Water with Personalization.

Case study on the beach

Same website, different customer journeys

A common problem for online travel companies is that consumers often spend time comparing flights or hotels across different websites before making the final decision to book. This can involve multiple visits to a particular website before they are ready to buy. Our research shows this is the single biggest factor influencing consumers to leave a website without booking travel options.

On The Beach is no exception to this trend. They cater to a wide range of customers, and their website traffic is a mix of both new and returning users. To help convince visitors to remain on their website and book, they want to show their different customer segments that they understand their different needs.

To do this, they try to provide them with personalized messages at different stages of their buying journey. This in turn helps people get the information they need and progress towards checkout.

Different messaging strokes for different folks

Testing and experimentation are key to helping On The Beach find the right message for each of its different customer segments. As Conversion Rate Optimization Manager, Alex McClean, explains,

“Testing and experimentation is important to us for two reasons. One is to help us understand our customers and what they want to see on site. And two is to help us learn and understand what we want to be able to do for our customers to help them”.

One example of the A/B testing that On The Beach carries out is trialing different badges to recommend the same holiday destination to different website visitors. With AB Tasty’s help, they discovered that new website visitors preferred holiday recommendations that were marked with a “Bestseller” badge. Returning users on the other hand, responded better to the same destination if it was marked with an “Our pick” badge. This was because they already trusted On The Beach to make holiday recommendations for them.

By testing these different messages, On The Beach was able to determine what message was right for what group. This led to a direct increase of more than 200 bookings on their website.

More tests and more of everything else

Initially, On The Beach started experimenting with some simple A/B tests based on content, product placement, and how different elements of their website performed. They then started to gradually increase the number of tests they did each month and bring other team members on board.

Now, On the Beach has developed a real culture of experimentation. It makes sure that all departments, including marketing, product development, and customer support have access to the latest testing information. And this greater level of involvement across the business also means that more hypotheses for tests come back to the marketing team.

This collaboration between teams has enabled On The Beach to make more data-driven decisions, successfully optimize different areas of its website, and continuously improve its customers’ user experience. The end result is greater customer satisfaction and increased growth for the business.

Alex McClean says,

“When we first started using AB Tasty, we were looking at rolling out five to ten tests a month. But now, as the business has advanced its testing capabilities and more people are getting involved, we’re rolling out 20-30 tests, with buy-in from the whole business”.

A helping hand from AB Tasty

For On the Beach, one of the major advantages of using AB Tasty’s experimentation optimization platform is being able to learn quickly and at scale. Using A/B testing, they can now make improvements to their website, iterate, and grow much more quickly than before. And this lets them provide visitors to their website a buying experience that speaks to all their customer segments.

Another key benefit for On The Beach is the support they receive from AB Tasty’s teams. Our responsive and knowledgeable support staff assist On The Beach in setting up tests, interpreting the results, and implementing optimizations on their website. We provide them with timely, personalized assistance, guiding them through the entire testing process and offering them expert advice on best practices.

But don’t just take our word for it. As On The Beach’s Alex McClean says,
“For us, the real reason that we chose AB Tasty, and what differentiated AB Tasty from the competitors was the level of service that we were offered. We have complete access to developers, really attentive CSMs. It’s really beneficial to keep things moving when we don’t have to go to our development team.”

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Article

Oct 28, 2025
7min read

From Lookers to Bookers: The Small Tests Fueling Hotel Growth

John Hughes

John Hughes

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Let’s be honest: your hotel’s real front door is digital. The entire guest experience now begins not in a lobby, but on a landing page. That first, make-or-break moment of hospitality has moved online, and it all kicks off with a single click.

For modern travelers, the digital experience isn’t a prelude to their stay; it’s part of it. They expect the same level of intuitive, personal service from your website that they’d expect in your lobby. They’re looking for a seamless journey, one that understands what they need before they even have to ask.

Delivering that isn’t about a massive, one-time overhaul. It’s about embracing a mindset of continuous optimization. It’s about seeing every interaction as a chance to learn, to test, and to improve. It’s about moving from “trial and error” to “trial and better.” This is the path to turning lookers into bookers and first-time visitors into lifelong guests. Let’s walk through how to build it, one step at a time.

From landing pages to lobbies

The shift is simple but profound: your website is no longer just a tool for transactions, it’s the start of the entire guest relationship. A slow-loading page, a confusing booking engine, or an offer that misses the mark doesn’t just cost you a sale, it subtly damages your brand’s promise of a stress-free, welcoming experience. The feeling a guest gets from your website is the feeling they’ll associate with your brand.

That means your digital presence needs to embody the very essence of hospitality. It should be effortless to navigate, anticipate your guests’ needs, and make them feel seen and valued from the moment they arrive. Every element, from your homepage hero image to the copy on your call-to-action buttons, contributes to this digital-first impression.

The great news is that you have more opportunities than ever to make that impression a brilliant one. While a front desk agent can only interact with one guest at a time, your website interacts with thousands. Each of those interactions is a rich source of data, a clue that can help you understand your guests on a deeper level and refine their experience. The challenge isn’t a lack of opportunity, but knowing where to start.

First, learn who’s at the door

Before you can offer a guest the perfect room, you need to know why they’re traveling. Are they on a family vacation, a solo business trip, or a romantic getaway? Just as a great concierge listens before making a recommendation, a great website must first understand user intent. Your visitors are telling you what they want through their behavior, you just have to learn how to listen.

Evolve separates its traffic sources

A fantastic example of this comes from Evolve Vacation Rental. They recognized that not all traffic is created equal when it came to attracting new homeowners to list their properties. A visitor arriving from a targeted Google search for “how to rent my vacation home” has a very different intent than someone who clicked a beautiful, brand-aware ad on Facebook. The first user is actively looking for a solution and is ready for details about fees, services, and qualifications. The second is likely in an earlier, more curious phase, just exploring the possibility.

By separating these traffic sources, Evolve was able to tailor its landing pages to match the visitor’s mindset. The high-intent Google visitor got straight to the point with clear calls-to-action and qualifying questions, while the Facebook visitor received more inspirational content. It’s a simple, powerful idea: speak to the journey your guest is on, not just the one you want them to take. Start by analyzing your traffic sources. What are your visitors’ search queries telling you? How does engagement differ between channels? Every click is a clue.

Using segmentation to deliver relevant offers

Once you have a sense of who’s at the door, you can start personalizing their welcome. A one-size-fits-all approach to offers is like a hotel restaurant with only one item on the menu, it’s bound to disappoint most of your guests. Segmentation is the key to creating a menu of experiences that feels personal to each visitor.

Best Western Rewards program

This is where we can learn from a leader in the industry, Best Western Hotels & Resorts. Their team wanted to encourage more visitors to sign up for their Best Western Rewards program. But instead of just showing the same generic pop-up to everyone, they got smart. They used data from their visitors’ search queries to create relevant, timely offers.

Here’s how it worked: a visitor searching for a one-night stay might be a business traveler with a specific need. But a visitor searching for a stay of two nights or longer is likely a leisure traveler with more flexibility. Best Western created different audience segments for these users. The leisure traveler looking for a longer stay was shown a pop-up with a special promotional offer, available only by signing up for a Rewards account. The result? A 12% increase in sign-ups from the campaign. They didn’t just shout about their loyalty program, they showed visitors exactly how it could benefit them, right when they were most receptive.

Make ‘book now’ the easiest click of their day

You’ve welcomed your visitor, understood their needs, and presented them with the perfect offer. Now comes the most critical moment: the booking. All the great work you’ve done can be undone in an instant by a clunky, confusing, or frustrating checkout process. At this stage, your one and only job is to remove friction.

Sometimes, the biggest barriers are the smallest things. The travel company Smartbox believed the “Add to Cart” CTA on their vacation packages wasn’t visible enough. They formed a simple hypothesis: a more vibrant, contrasting color would draw more attention and, therefore, more clicks. Using a simple A/B test, they changed the button color from aqua to a bright pink. This tiny change generated a 16% increase in clicks. It wasn’t a guess, it was a data-backed decision that made the user’s path clearer.

Similarly, Evolve Vacation Rental tested the copy on their call-to-action button for homeowners interested in listing their properties. The original read “See if You Qualify,” while the variation said “Start for Free.” The new phrasing, which better aligned with the user’s goal of understanding the service, resulted in a staggering 161% increase in conversions. These tests prove that you don’t need a complete redesign to see dramatic results. You need a willingness to question every element and let your users’ behavior guide you to the better option.

The journey doesn’t end at the confirmation page

What if the most hospitable digital experiences are the ones that know when to stop being purely digital? The goal isn’t just to build a self-service journey, but to create one that’s smart enough to recognize when a guest is confused or frustrated. Instead of letting that friction lead to an abandoned booking, you can proactively offer a human interaction to guide them through it. This is about augmenting the digital journey with a personal touch, right when it’s needed most.

The most forward-thinking brands understand that their website and physical properties are not separate channels, they are two parts of one holistic experience. We can draw inspiration from the travel agency Havas Voyages. Their team implemented a clever strategy for users who showed “exit intent”. Instead of just letting them go, a pop-up appeared offering them an appointment with a travel planner at their nearest physical agency. They saved a potential lost lead by seamlessly offering a human alternative.

The application for a hotel is incredibly powerful. Imagine a user struggling on a complex booking page and showing signs of leaving. What if, instead of losing them, you triggered a pop-up offering a “live chat with our concierge” or a “call back from the front desk within five minutes”? This is more than a conversion-saving tactic; it’s a brand-defining moment. It shows that your hospitality isn’t confined to your lobby. It proves your team is ready to help, across any channel, at any time. By blending your digital tools with a human touch, you build a unified brand experience that creates trust and earns loyalty.

Ready to find your better? We help teams like yours turn brave ideas into brilliant results. Let’s talk about what you want to achieve.

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Article

Oct 21, 2025
6min read

Destination: Different – How Gen Z is Rewriting the Travel Playbook

John Hughes

John Hughes

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Travel and hospitality is a huge industry, estimated at 955.90 billion USD in 2025. It’s also one that’s changing rapidly, with online travel bookings projected to account for 75% of all revenue by 2029. That’s why we’ve put together industry insights in our e-book, Decoding Online Shopping: Travel and Hospitality Consumer Trends for 2025.

What’s clear from our research is that Gen Z is quickly reshaping the online travel journey. They’re doing things differently to previous generations, from where they find inspiration, to why they abandon a cart, and how they view personalization. And that has big implications for travel brands.

Google flights/hotels and social media are now their go-to

A majority of Gen Z say they now start their search for travel options on Google Flights/Hotels (52%) or social media (50%). This shows a major shift from all other generations, who prefer to start their online search on a search engine or an aggregated travel site like Booking.com.

These results indicate that social media will, if anything, be an even more crucial battleground for travel brands going forward. To grab Gen Z’s attention, you’ll need to budget for targeted social media ads. Influencer content also plays an important role here, not only in making Gen Z aware of potential travel options but in providing social proof of existing ones.

Gen Z travel options

Location still leads, but reviews and visuals are more important

One thing that hasn’t changed for Gen Z when booking accommodation and transportation options online is the importance of location. Proximity to key destinations is still the most influential factor in convincing Gen Z to book, as it is with other generations.

What does change for Gen Z is their even greater reliance on authentic reviews. They want their travel choices to be validated by their peers, and well-positioned authentic reviews provide them with the reassurance they need to feel confident in their decision. Use A/B testing to determine the ideal placement of customer reviews on the relevant pages of your website.

Growing up with digital technology and social media, Gen Z also thrives on visual content. Having visually engaging, up-to-date images and videos on your website will appeal to them more than any other generation. This also holds true for hotel listings on Google Hotels and aggregated travel sites.

Gen Z influential factors

Simplify checkout and increase payment options

The number one reason that Gen Z leaves a travel website without making a purchase is that their chosen payment method is not accepted. This again is in sharp contrast to previous generations, where the top reason for doing so is that they simply aren’t ready to buy. However, that does suggest that if Gen Z gets to your website, they’ll be more ready to buy. Adding additional payment methods, like Apple Pay or Google Pay, will reduce the chances of Gen Z leaving before they’ve booked.

Gen Z also say they leave a website if there are too many steps involved in checkout. Adjusting the checkout process to make it more streamlined will reduce unnecessary friction and increase the likelihood of Gen Z making a purchase.

Gen Z and the checkout process

Adapt with personalization and AI

Above all, Gen Z wants a seamless digital experience that’s tailored to their needs. And 65% of Gen Z embrace data-driven personalization as a helpful tool. Once again, this is a higher number than generations before them. Specifically, Gen Z wants a website to remember their preferences and offer them real-time recommendations based on those preferences.

Personalization gives you a perfect opportunity to build stronger relationships with Gen Z customers. You can do this by leveraging first-party data to offer tailored recommendations, simplify the booking process, and provide faster checkout.

Gen Z are also more open than any previous generation to using AI-powered tools, like chatbots or virtual assistants. Nearly half of Gen Z (49%) say they’ve used an AI tool when booking travel options and found it helpful. And just 7% of Gen Z say they’re not interested in AI at all.

Focus on making AI interactions feel natural, efficient and genuinely helpful. Set clear expectations about what AI can and can’t do, and ensure human support is easily accessible if needed.

Use of AI and chatbots

Examples of personalization done right

While there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to personalization, some companies seem to do personalization consistently well:

  • Netflix uses personalization to determine customers’ interests and promote related content and suggestions in real time. This is a perfect example of how personalization can remove friction by making it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for.
  • Stitch Fix collects information customers supply about their size, shape, and personal style. It then selects outfits based on each one’s taste and personality. This shows how personalization and AI can work together to offer customers a great website experience.
  • LinkedIn is a great example of a company that knows how to balance privacy concerns with utility. By providing personalized suggestions and links based on users’ current connections, LinkedIn makes it easier to network, look for work, or catch up with former co-workers.

Conclusion

The travel and hospitality industry is rapidly evolving, and Gen Z are quickly reshaping what the online travel journey looks like. Their expectations of what makes a good digital experience are also greater than ever before. To be successful, this needs to be seamless and tailored to their needs.

Key to this is greater personalization powered by data and experimentation. By optimizing Gen Z’s experience of booking travel options, you can build trust and loyalty and keep Gen Z travelers coming back for more.

Takeaways for travel and hospitality brands

  • Work on your social media presence to influence potential customers and increase brand awareness.
  • Showcase nearby attractions and must-see sites in listings to capture attention.
  • Feature high-quality reviews and images on key pages to build trust and credibility. 
  • Simplify checkout and offer more payment options to reduce drop off.
  • Personalize with relevant real-time recommendations for a more tailored digital experience. 
  • Use AI to provide instant answers and assist travelers in real time.

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Article

Oct 14, 2025
8min read

Flying Through Checkout: How Experimentation Shapes Airline Consumer Behavior

John Hughes

John Hughes

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The airline checkout is where booking intent becomes revenue. Yet for most airlines, it’s also where the majority of customers drop off. This high abandonment rate isn’t just a cost of doing business; it’s a direct result of a complex booking process failing to meet modern traveler expectations. Fixing this friction is one of the biggest opportunities for growth in the industry.

This drop-off isn’t just a technical problem, it’s a human one. The checkout flow is where a traveler’s excitement meets anxiety, and where price sensitivity clashes with the desire for comfort. For airline and travel professionals, understanding this interplay is the key to conversion.

The answer isn’t to guess what travelers want or to copy a competitor’s design. It’s to listen, learn, and adapt by building a system that lets you ask customers what they prefer, not with a survey, but with their clicks. As we discuss in our Travel Essentials Kit e-book, this is the world of experimentation, where every test becomes part of a continuous cycle of learning and iteration.

Why airline checkout is so complex

Unlike a simple e-commerce purchase, booking a flight is rarely a one-click affair. The complexity is baked right into the business model. You’re not just selling a seat; you’re selling a multi-faceted travel experience, and each component adds another layer to the checkout.

First, there’s the core booking. A simple round-trip flight is one thing, but multi-leg journeys with different carriers, layovers, and time zones create a significant cognitive load for the user. Then come the additional services, such as seats, bags, meals, or insurance, where each choice is a potential exit point. Finally, regulatory requirements can create long, intimidating forms.

The result of this complexity is an abandonment rate that, according to Inai, hits 90%. To put it another way, nine out of every ten potential customers that start booking a flight will leave without paying. That’s significantly higher than the already high average e-commerce site abandonment rate of 70%. And the problem is even worse on mobile.

$260 billion in lost orders across the US and EU are recoverable through better checkout

This is more than a user experience flaw; it’s a massive financial bleed. The Baymard Institute estimates that $260 billion in lost orders across the US and EU are recoverable through better checkout design alone. It’s a multi-billion dollar design challenge waiting for a solution, but the fix doesn’t require a complete and costly overhaul. A commitment to analyzing user data, testing hypotheses, and letting the results guide incremental, high-impact changes will have your customers soaring through your checkout process in no time.

Decoding consumer behavior at checkout

To optimize the checkout flow, you have to get inside the traveler’s mind. Their behavior is driven by powerful psychological factors, and your data shows exactly where the friction is.

39% of shoppers abandon cart

The single biggest culprit is cost ambiguity. The top reason for cart abandonment, cited by 39% of shoppers in research aggregated by the Baymard Institute, is discovering high extra costs at the end of the process. This points directly to the airline industry’s practice of “drip pricing.” The low base fare gets them in the door, but the steady drip of fees erodes trust. It’s not just the final price; it’s the feeling of being misled.

Next is process friction. The same research found a “too long or complicated” checkout will cause 18% of users to leave. Forcing a user to create an account is another major barrier, responsible for another 19% of abandoned carts. This accumulation of friction—multiple pages, endless form fields, and mandatory sign-ups—creates a powerful negative momentum that pushes users to exit.

Finally, there’s the trust deficit. A staggering 19% of users will abandon a purchase simply because they didn’t trust the website with their payment information. This isn’t just about SSL logos. A user who experiences a price increase through drip pricing is psychologically primed to be more skeptical when it’s time to enter their payment details, as the final cost no longer aligns with their initial expectation.

Understanding these behaviors isn’t about exploiting them. It’s about designing a smoother, more transparent, and less stressful experience that guides the traveler confidently toward their destination while also building brand credibility.

Experimentation as a window into the traveler’s mind

So, how do you solve for cost ambiguity or process friction? The answer is to ask your users, not with a survey, but by testing different approaches and measuring the results. Experimentation, through A/B and multivariate testing, is the most effective way to understand what travelers actually do.

The process starts with a data-driven hypothesis. For example, if your analytics show a high drop-off rate on the passenger details page, you could hypothesize that reducing the number of form fields will reduce friction and increase conversions. From there, you can run a simple A/B test: Version A is your current, longer form, and Version B is the new, simplified one. By showing each version to different segments of your audience, you can measure which one leads to more completed bookings. The result is no longer a guess; it’s a data-backed insight that de-risks design changes and allows you to make improvements with a measurable impact.

But this isn’t just about one-size-fits-all fixes. You can take it a step further with personalization and segmentation. A first-time booker might need more guidance and reassurance during checkout, while a frequent flyer would prefer a streamlined experience that pre-fills their preferences and key information. Experimentation allows you to test different, tailored experiences for these segments, ensuring every traveler gets the smoothest possible path to booking.

What airlines can test in checkout

Once you embrace an experimentation mindset, you’ll see test opportunities everywhere. The goal is to challenge assumptions and find what truly moves the needle. Here are a few powerful areas to start:

  • Call-to-action design: Don’t underestimate the power of a button. We worked with Smartbox to test colour variations of their “Add to cart” button, and a simple color change resulted in a 16% increase in clicks.
  • Payment options: The payment step is the final hurdle. Adding digital wallets is one of the most impactful changes you can make. An analysis by Stripe found that businesses enabling Apple Pay saw an average 22% increase in conversion. It’s a powerful antidote to checkout friction, especially on mobile. You could even explore digital boarding passes that integrate directly with mobile wallets. 
  • Form factor and flow: Is a single-page checkout less intimidating than a multi-step progress bar? Test it and see!
  • Trust-building elements: Reinforce security at the moment of payment. Test the placement of security seals and clear language around your cancellation policies. A simple statement like “Free 24-hour cancellation” can provide the reassurance a hesitant traveler needs.
  • Upsell placement: How and when you present add-ons matters. Test bundling services versus offering them a la carte. You might find users are more receptive to upsells like early check-in or seat selection via a follow-up email after the booking is confirmed, reducing friction in the initial checkout.
  • Mobile-first experiences: Your mobile checkout shouldn’t just be a shrunken version of your desktop site. Test mobile-specific designs with larger tap targets, simplified navigation, and form fields that trigger the correct mobile keyboard layout.

From insights to impact: Building a culture of experimentation

The true power of optimization isn’t found in a single winning test. It’s found in building a culture of continuous learning. When your product, marketing, and engineering teams are united by an experimentation mindset, you stop debating opinions and start making decisions based on data. You dare to go further.

Iberojet increase in clicks

Take Iberojet, for example. The online travel agency questioned whether the order of tabs on their homepage was ideal. Working with us, they ran a simple A/B test to change the order based on user browsing history. That small change increased clicks on the “Search” button by 25%, pushing more users down the conversion funnel.

Another powerful example is Ulta Beauty. Working with us, they’ve embedded experimentation into their innovation process, scaling their program from 20 tests per year to over 65. Rather than relying on assumptions, their teams use testing to get quick, data-driven answers. For example, by testing an overlay with product recommendations in the shopping cart, they drove a 9% increase in revenue and a 15% increase in “add to bag” clicks, proving the value of a nimble, “fail-fast” environment.

This is how you find your better. It’s not about finding one perfect, final version of your checkout. It’s about the restless, determined pursuit of a better experience for every traveler, on every device, every single day. The journey starts with a single question: What will you try?

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Feb 14, 2025
6min read

The Mobile Playbook: Personalization, Performance, and Profitability

John Hughes

John Hughes

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Mobile commerce has revolutionized how consumers interact with brands — from browsing products on the go to researching the latest trends. Yet, despite mobile usage soaring, the full potential of mobile commerce remains untapped. While traffic from mobile devices continues to rise, conversion rates still trail behind other channels. What’s driving the gap between browsing and purchasing on mobile? 

In this post, we’ll explore key mobile performance stats, delve into the challenges behind these numbers, and showcase how Quantum Metric and AB Tasty collaborate to help brands close this gap. If you want the your own mobile playbook, the insights shared here are based on data from Quantum Metric’s eBook, How Mobile Performance Builds Consumer Confidence.

1. Mobile is everywhere, but conversions lag.

Mobile traffic is not just a trend, it’s the backbone of online shopping. Consumers are increasingly using their phones for everything from discovering products to making final purchase decisions. However, despite this surge in mobile traffic, conversions still don’t match the volume of visits. So, what’s going wrong?

Insight:

  • Mobile accounts for 73% of monthly traffic, but only 47% of sales.
  • Travel sees the highest mobile traffic (73%), but the lowest sales share (39%).

Challenge:
Consumers love to browse on mobile — reading reviews, comparing prices, and window shopping. But when it comes time to make a purchase, they often shift to desktops or other channels. This disconnect between browsing and buying is a critical challenge.

Solution:
Quantum Metric delivers real-time insights to identify where users drop off in their mobile journeys, helping brands pinpoint key friction points. Armed with this data, AB Tasty can run A/B tests and experiments to optimize mobile conversions by improving layouts, simplifying checkout, or personalizing offers based on user behavior.

2. Personalization drives engagement (and sales).

With so much information available at their fingertips, consumers expect personalized experiences that speak to their unique preferences. But while mobile apps can deliver these tailored experiences, it’s not always the case that mobile users receive the level of customization they desire. So, how can brands keep up with the demand for hyper-personalized mobile experiences?

Insight:

  • 39% of consumers prefer mobile apps, but 33% have reduced app usage.
  • Conversion rates on mobile apps are 3X higher than on mobile web.

Challenge:
Consumers are increasingly expecting experiences that are customized to their preferences. Whether it’s personalized product recommendations or location-based offers, users demand content that resonates with them on a deeper level. But how do brands manage to provide this while maintaining convenience and ease of use?

Solution:
Quantum Metric provides detailed session data, revealing exactly what users are engaging with and where they’re dropping off. AB Tasty then uses this data to create personalized experiences through hyper-targeted experiments, ensuring that each user sees content that’s most relevant to them — ultimately boosting engagement and driving conversions.

3. Building confidence in mobile transactions.

Even with mobile traffic growing, many consumers are still hesitant to make purchases — especially larger ones — on their phones. Trust is a major factor in whether or not a consumer feels confident enough to complete a mobile transaction. But how can brands overcome the hurdles of security concerns and poor mobile experiences?

Insight:

  • 59% of consumers only feel confident making purchases of $50 or less on mobile.
  • Desktop AOVs are 70% higher than mobile for retail and nearly 2X higher for travel.

Challenge:
Security concerns and clunky mobile experiences can drive away customers before they even hit the checkout button. Many consumers feel more comfortable making purchases on desktops, where they associate higher transaction values with a more secure, familiar environment.

Solution:
Quantum Metric identifies friction points — slow load times, security concerns, or error messages — that can erode trust. AB Tasty uses A/B testing and experiments to address these pain points, creating smoother, more secure user flows that enhance trust and improve conversion rates.

4. Performance matters more than ever.

With consumers’ expectations for speed at an all-time high, mobile performance can make or break the user experience. From slow loading times to app crashes, mobile performance issues are a significant barrier to conversions. So how can brands ensure their mobile experiences are fast and seamless?

Insight:

  • 59% of users have experienced slow performance; 43% have faced app crashes.
  • API error rates are 2-3X higher on mobile than desktop, with issues like long spinner rates causing 48% higher friction.

Challenge:
Users have little patience for performance issues. A slow-loading page or app crash can lead to frustration and, ultimately, abandonment. The pressure to deliver fast, smooth mobile experiences is higher than ever.

Solution:
Quantum Metric’s real-time data quickly highlights performance issues, from slow page loads to API errors. Once identified, AB Tasty can experiment with various solutions, optimizing mobile performance and delivering a smoother, faster user journey.

5. Turning data into action.

In the fast-paced mobile landscape, time is of the essence. Consumers expect quick, efficient mobile experiences, and if a transaction takes too long, they won’t hesitate to abandon it. So, how can brands ensure they are responding to user behavior in real time?

Insight:

  • 55% of consumers will abandon a mobile transaction if it takes longer than 3-5 minutes.

Challenge:
The pressure to scale innovation without losing sight of the customer is real. Mobile transactions need to be fast and seamless, or customers will simply walk away — especially when it comes to on-the-go transactions. 

Solution:
Quantum Metric empowers brands with real-time behavioral data that shows where and when users drop off during their mobile journey. AB Tasty then helps turn this data into action by running targeted experiments that address specific friction points, reducing abandonment and improving the overall mobile experience.

Conclusion: turning mobile commerce into your competitive edge.

Mobile commerce isn’t just another sales channel — it’s a key competitive advantage. To succeed, brands must focus on delivering fast, personalized, and secure mobile experiences that build consumer trust. By combining Quantum Metric’s real-time behavioral insights with AB Tasty’s experimentation platform, brands can close the gap between browsing and buying, unlocking the true potential of mobile commerce.

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Article

Dec 17, 2024
9min read

How The Contentsquare & AB Tasty Integration Improves Testing & Drives Results

John Hughes

John Hughes

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The Contentsquare & AB Tasty integration helps you optimize your A/B testing lifecycle, driving high-value outcomes with low-risk scenarios. Let’s dive into how this integration will help you improve your customer experience (CX) and boost your growth metrics.

A side-by-side comparison of 2 webpages using Contentsquare analysis

 An overview of the integration

When Contentsquare and AB Tasty are used separately, you only get half the success of your test results. Say you want to test a hero banner. Using AB Tasty, you test 2 versions, and find there’s no improvement to your conversion rate. But, perhaps one of the versions increased customer engagement? Without the help of Contentsquare, you’re limited in your view of how your tests impact your entire customer experience.

Or, let’s say you’ve analyzed your customer journey using Contentsquare and discovered one of your conversion pages has a high drop-off rate. You come up with a hypothesis as to why this might be the case and hard-code a change, but this leads to more drop-offs, not less. Without AB Tasty, you’re unable to test your hypotheses, which results in wasted time, resources, and a potentially worse customer experience.

But, it doesn’t have to be this way. By integrating Contentsquare and AB Tasty, you can dive deeper into your customer experience to pinpoint and prioritize the most critical friction points or opportunities to experiment. You can also build better hypotheses based on key metrics, create and run data-informed tests, and better understand why variations perform well (or not). 

With Contentsquare, you gain a more comprehensive understanding of your customer experience, enabling you to conduct more informed, data-driven tests with AB Tasty.

 Benefits of the Contentsquare and AB Tasty integration

Where Contentsquare provides deep and meaningful insights into your customer behavior, AB Tasty empowers you to act on those insights, in real time.

“AB Tasty is a technology partner with Contentsquare. We facilitate A/B testing, experimentation, personalization, and audience segmentation. We help facilitate activation of the data that you get out of Contentsquare to fuel that endless cycle of experimentation.”

Mary Kate Cassh, Head of Growth Marketing, North America, AB Tasty

Using  Contentsquare and AB Tasty together, you get

  • Unparalleled insights into customer behavior 
  • Hyper-personalization features to deliver tailor-made experiences to boost conversion rates
  • A simplified, streamlined workflow that eliminates data silos by having data accessible across easy-to-understand dashboards
  • Greater business impact by uncovering hidden opportunities in your customer journey and testing your hypotheses before hard-coding changes
  • Comprehensive experiment analysis with easy-to-understand visuals and side-by-side comparisons of your control and variation
  • Continuous improvement to your digital strategy

Want to know the fundamentals of how the Contentsquare and AB Tasty integration works? Learn more.

How Contentsquare can inform your testing in AB Tasty

Let’s look at how this works in practice, using the framework of a continuous testing cycle. There are 5 stages to the continuous testing cycle—here’s how the Contentsquare and AB Tasty integration works to optimize each step along the way:

Stage 1: analysis phase

This first stage involves finding friction points or opportunities at each point of your customer journey. Then, it’s about generating test hypotheses to help solve or optimize the points that need the most attention.

You can break down this stage into 2 forms of analysis. 

  1. Innovation analysis, where you work out whether your content is optimized for the best customer experience you can provide

2. Troubleshooting analysis, where you uncover errors or friction points in the customer journey, preventing users from moving forward.

With Contentsquare’s Experience Analytics, you can find out how your customers are behaving page by page, from entry to exit, and why. With a suite of capabilities, you can deep-dive into your customer experience and analyze areas that need the most improvement.

 Screenshot of Contentsquare’s Experience Analytics dashboard, open on the Heatmaps capability.

Use Session Replay to find out

  • What are the behaviors of customers at critical conversion points?
  • What’s causing rage clicks or other frustration behaviors?
  • Where are customers encountering errors?

Rage clicks are when customers click on an element (clickable or not) of a website or app multiple times in frustration or anger. They’re often caused by technical issues, confusing navigation, or a cluttered design.

Use Journey Analysis to find out

  • What are the top landing pages?
  • What is the lowest-performing landing page?
  • What is the highest-performing journey to reach your goal?
  • What are the most popular journeys?
  • Where do customers drop off or bounce?

Use Heatmaps to find out

  • What’s the most attractive content/category on the page?
  • What’s leading to the most conversions? Is it visible enough?
  • In what order do customers consume the page?
  • Are there any frictions or rage clicks on the page?

Stage 2: analysis resolution

Now you’ve got a few hypotheses to test, it’s time to work out how to prioritize what to test first.

The focus should be on tests with low effort, high reward and those with the biggest impact on your key performance indicators (KPIs).
Contentsquare’s Impact Quantification can help you prioritize your tests and make better decisions by assessing the impact of each test. All you need to do is clarify your goal and then segment users based on whether they completed the goal of your A/B test.

Contentsquare’s Impact Quantification in action.

Impact Quantification can then be used to compare these segments and confirm how much revenue the success of the test will likely generate.

 Stage 3; experimentation roadmap

Once you’ve established which hypotheses have the greatest potential to impact your KPIs, it’s time to start fleshing out your testing roadmap.

This roadmap will help guide every step of your testing process—from the build to the design and copy and finally, the execution. This roadmap is where you detail who’s doing what and when, giving you an overview of your site. This is especially useful if you’re running tests on multiple pages.

The dos and don’ts of your testing roadmap

Do’s

✅ Run your tests in at least 2-week increments to account for site traffic cycles and seasonality.

✅ Color-code your roadmap for the different stages of your experimentation so it’s easy to quickly see where each test is at.

Don’t

❌ Have 2 tests running on 2 pages at the same time—it can muddy the data and lead you to potentially misread your results.

❌ Don’t run multiple tests on the same page independently—use multivariate tests to see how changes to multiple sections interact with one another.

Stage 4: start A/B testing

All that hard work has finally paid off—it’s time to put your hypotheses into action and start running tests with AB Tasty.

Using your roadmap as a guide, start building out your tests in AB Tasty to optimize, personalize, and improve your customer experience.

Stage 5: analysis and results

Get site statistics directly through AB Tasty and couple that with Contentsquare’s customer behavioral insights. 

From AB Tasty, get direct reports based on page statistics—giving you a snapshot of what’s going on in your campaign testing period.

From Contentsquare, as soon as your test goes live, you can watch how your customers behave in the control and variation, side-by-side using Heatmaps and Session Replay. Get a visual understanding of why and how your customers behave differently in your variation and use these insights to inform your next testing phase.

 How the partnership works in real life

Now that you know how the Contentsquare and AB Tasty partnership works, it’s time to see what it’s like in the real world. 

Here’s how 2 leading brands have embraced the integration of experience analytics and experimentation into their CX to drive real growth outcomes.

Clarins

Global skincare company Clarins wanted to find out whether a “wishlist” option on their site would help to increase pageviews and conversions. 

Using the Contentsquare integration with AB Tasty, they tested adding a heart icon to their product listing pages (PLPs) and product description pages (PDPs). This heart allowed users to save their favorite products to potentially purchase them at a later stage.

This test increased the overall number of transactions and resulted in

  • +1.54% increase in basket page views
  • +1.83% increase in transactions

“We are really passionate about continually optimizing what we’re already doing well plus also testing new theories to drive a great customer experience and continue to drive the commercial priorities of our website.”—Roisin O’Brien, Ecommerce Trading Manager at Clarins UK

Hotel Chocolat

British chocolate manufacturer Hotel Chocolat wanted to optimize its digital presence and improve its brand and on-site customer experience. 

Rather than focusing on conversion rates, Mel Parekh, Head of ecommerce at Hotel Chocolate and his team wanted to focus on engagement and clickthrough rates. 

Recognizing the importance of layout and user experience on customer engagement, the goal was to create a more visually appealing and intuitive homepage. 

WithContentsquare’s integration with AB Tasty, his team redesigned the homepage, focusing on the category tiles, which were found to be the most attractive elements on the page.

By optimizing the homepage, they saw a

  • -10% reduction in bounce rates
  • +1.67% increase in visiting time
  • +0.54% increase in overall conversion rates, +7.24% increase on desktop

Mel Parekh, Head of ecommerce at Hotel Chocolate talked about customer loyalty at a recent Contentsquare CX Circle event. 

Smarter insights with Contentsquare

Contentsquare is the all-in-one Experience Intelligence platform designed to be easily used by anyone that cares about digital journeys. With our flexible and scalable platform, you quickly get a deep understanding of your customers’ whole online journey. 

Our AI-powered insights provide those “ah ha” moments you need to deliver the right experiences. You get to work faster and smarter with the confidence to know what to do next to improve your digital experiences. Leading brands use Contentsquare to grow their business, deliver more customer happiness and move with greater agility in a constantly changing world. Our insights are used to optimize the experience on over 1.3 million websites worldwide. For more information, visit: www.contentsquare.com

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