We recently had the chance to do interview Alix de Sagazan, the co-founder of AB Tasty.
This Paris-based startup offers an online A/B testing tool that allows you to carry out tests, in a few minutes and without any technical knowledge, using your web browser. Your results are displayed in simple graphs, making your decisions quick and clear.
Thanks for joining us Alix! So, A/B testing is a trendy topic in the digital world. Could you explain it in a few words?
A/B testing is a simple method to test variations of a website against the original, and compare consumer behaviours in order to improve the quality of the site and its conversion rate, leading more users to buy, complete a form registration, click a link, among others.
With AB Tasty, our A/B SaaS application, these tests are easy to set up and do not require any technical knowledge.
For instance, one of our clients, Etam, a French online boutique, simply changed a category label all over its website. It took less than 5 minutes to implement this test that produced a 9.8% increase of the visitor flow. To get more details, check out our online video below this article or try our product for free during 30 days.
How did you get the idea for AB Tasty?
Rémi and I started a web analytics consulting company to help online players increase their conversion rate. This experience made us understand how difficult it was for Marketing Teams to run A/B tests. They had to modify pages on their server with the help of their IT department, being therefore dependent on the technical team workflow. It was always taking time and energy, especially for big companies with complex IT processes.
We just asked ourselves this question: how could we make the A/B testing process simpler and introduce more agility? That’s the philosophy behind AB Tasty: a simple online software to set up A/B tests without technical knowledge. We want to fulfill marketing and technical teams’ needs – and we successfully manage to provide both ease of use and advanced features.
What are your achievements since the beginning of the year 2013? And what do you plan for the future?
We have been enjoying the development of AB Testing in France. We have increased our turnover by 300% and won some big French online-retailers like Cdiscount, a leading French e-commerce player, Photobox and Bouygues Telecom. Even media players like France Télévisions and Prisma Media have chosen our solution.
Last summer, we launched a brand new offer on the French market using a Pay As You Go pricing model, to help small players get a taste of our solution and discover A/B testing. So far A/B testing has been a tool for big players, and we think that small players should also benefit from it.
We will develop our activity for other European countries as soon as possible. We have always wanted AB Tasty to become an international AB Testing tool.
According to you, how will other European countries be different to France?
We are trying to build an international tool that will satisfy our current clients and future ones. Our offers are currently relevant for French companies, but consumer behaviours and expectations are different from one country to another. So we’ll have to face cultural differences as well as various approaches to A/B testing and to adapt ourselves!
We are also aware that local footprint has a huge impact on a product development in a new country. For instance, Webtrekk, a web analytics German tool, has succeeded in competing with the giant Webtrends, especially in Italy, thanks to a local establishment in 2011. So local offices may be required in the near future.
You want to expand across the European market. What are the strengths that make you better that your competitors?
First of all we have a web analytics background that helps us understand marketing teams’ needs and concerns. Our client approach is a key strength while the market still needs education. Secondly, we are as close to our consumers as possible, and will keep developing our tool based on their ongoing feedback. Every time a consumer asks us about a new feature, we think and rethink AB Tasty in order to improve it. I’ll let you imagine our roadmap of new features 😉 Website personalisation and mobile testing are at the core of it.
Regarding already deployed features, we differentiate ourselves from the competition through a focus on reports and segmentation. While it’s possible to link a test to your analytics software (Google Analytics, Omniture), we think that delivering raw data to our customers is not enough. That’s why we developed an intuitive and powerful report interface to read your results. Segmentation is also a feature that makes us stand out; you can create complex testing scenarios based on your users’ behaviours. And last but not least, we also provide full support to our premium customers and in-house training. They can make use of our experience and experience our ideas of building new tests and analyzing results.
You hired 6 people this year. Are you still looking for talent?
For sure! As we plan to expand around Europe, we need more staff, from engineers to account managers, to quickly answer client questions and provide the quality of support we are already reputed to deliver in France.
Finally do you have A/B testing tips for our readers?
AB Testing isn’t luck! You must deeply analyse your web analytics data, as well as other data sources to understand your users’ experiences, identify potential problems and figure out clever solutions that will serve your testing hypothesis. Then test it. If it’s a success, well done! If it’s not, do not give up and test again!
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