The importance of high velocity testing

I’m a big proponent of high velocity testing, and believe the more tests you run the more effective you are. This doesn’t mean that these tests are throw it at the wall kind of tests, they still need to be grounded in research with a decent hypothesis that you validate, but the more you run the more effective your testing programme will be:

1. the more you test the more you learn

For every test you want a falsifiable hypothesis. This gives you the ability to achieve a learning whether your test wins or not. More learning increases your chance of your test being a winner the next time around.

2. the more tests you run, the more winners you will get

I know its dumb to say, but increasing volume means that you will run more tests, more tests mean you will get more winners (overall), although maybe not as a percentage of tests run. There is no point in running a testing program where you run a test a month and get a winner every two months. That’s dispiriting for the team and doesn’t add value to your bottom line.

3. wins are compounded

Four winning tests with a 5% uplift don’t work out to be a 20% uplift, but the wins are compounded,and it works out to a 22% uplift.

Your processes should remain similar in order to achieve this:

• look at the slots you have on your site to fill (e.g. for SAAS you’ll have the homepage, signup page, first user experience funnel, payment page etc)
• ensure that you have a wealth of data around visitor behaviour and challenges, you need to be able to generate a lot of hypotheses
• Generate these hypotheses, wireframe and get tests ready for each slot (you need to have one or two ready to go in order to be able to switch out quickly)
• Be ruthless with your testing, don’t be afraid to kill things that don’t look like winners (the other perspective with this is that your hypothesis may be right, but the execution could be wrong, further iteration may be required)
• It can be useful to try smaller developmental test ideas in here (not red button/green button tests), but tests that are more value proposition/microcopy focussed that don’t require a lot of development

Although it takes a lot more resources in order to increase your testing velocity, the results are worth it in terms of wins and learnings.