Top 5 Tools to A/B Test Your App in 2018

A/B testing is a pivotal step in every mobile app’s lifecycle. It’s imperative to test every aspect of your app and understand what’s working and what’s not. We scoured the web and found a variety of tools out there, but recognized these as the top 5 for mobile professionals, each offering a unique solution.

Optimizely

Optimizely, one of the most well-known companies in the industry, offers solutions for mobile web and mobile apps. You can A/B test any feature and make immediate changes with no need for app store approval. You can also experiment with onboarding, feature discovery, and re-engagement strategies. If you’re not sure about a new feature you can do phased rollouts and then quickly iterate any changes. You can also deliver personalized experiences to all your users with their advanced targeting.

Leanplum

Thanks to Leanplum’s platform mobile professionals no longer have to rely on their gut feeling when it comes to why an element of their app is or isn’t working. Create an effective test to make sure you’re testing properly. You can run mobile A/B tests with no app store resubmission and get insights immediately. With Leanplum you can A/B test in-app UI (such as buttons, text, images), messaging (such as timing, deep links, etc), and channels (such as push notifications, email, and app inbox). To top it off, with Leanplum you’ll get more than just A/B testing, but also automated insights, time estimators and two-tailed testing.

Appsee

Appsee offers a unique way to analyze your A/B tests on the qualitative level, with the help of user session recordings and touch heatmaps. First, you can watch user session recordings in real-time and see exactly how users interact with different variants. Is one variant more intuitive than the other? Are users navigating smoothly or confused? You can obtain all of these insights via user session recordings. Then, with touch heatmaps, you can see on an aggregate level where your users are tapping and swiping on each screen. This clear visualization of areas of high and low input will help you quickly identify which parts of the screens receive the most and least attention. Touch heatmaps also reveal usability issues, such as unresponsive gestures. You can build an A/B test to address a gesture issue and see via touch heatmaps if your variant performed differently than the control.

Example of unresponsive gesture touch heatmap paired with test variants.

Taplytics

Taplytics offers a variety of A/B testing opportunities. You can edit any element and don’t have to worry about going through app store approval. You can test simple elements or complex behaviors with Taplytics’ visual A/B tests and control every variable of your app by putting a switch or dial on every feature. They offer code experiments which allows you to create a code-block and push it to a particular user base. With their feature flagging you can instantly or gradually roll-out any features and then watch in real time the impact. Taplytics is available for iOS and Android.

Apptimize

Advance even your toughest UI and UX objectives with Apptimize’s A/B testing platform. You have a full control visual editor to make all the changes you need such as design, rewording and more. Apptimize also allows you to test any element of the app with dynamic variables and code blocks which support Objective-C, Swift, Java, HTML5, Xamarin, and Reactive Native. You can optimize conversion funnels, enhance your app’s user experience, and improve user onboarding when you use Apptimize’s A/B testing suite.

Which A/B testing tools have you tried and liked? Comment below.

Top 5 Tools to A/B Test Your App in 2018 was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.