Artificial intelligence has been a recurring theme for decades. However, it’s no longer science fiction – it’s a reality.
Since OpenAI launched its own form of generative AI, ChatGPT, in November 2022, the world has yet to stop talking about its striking capabilities. It’s particularly fascinating to see just how easy it is to get results after interacting with this bot which is comprised of deep-learning algorithms for natural language processing.
Even Google quickly followed by launching a new and experimental project, Bard, to revolutionize its own Search. By harnessing the power of generative AI and the capacity of large language models, Google is seeking to take its search process to the next level.
Given the rapid growth of this technological advancement over the past few months, it’s time that we talk about generative AI in the context of A/B testing and experimentation.
Whether you’re curious about how AI can impact your experiments or are ready for inspiration we’ll discuss some of our ideas around using AI for A/B testing, personalization, and conversion rate optimization.
What is generative AI?
Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that doesn’t have programming limitations, which allows it to generate new content (think ChatGPT). Instead of following a specific, pre-existing dataset, generative AI learns from indexing extensive data, focusing on patterns and using deep learning techniques and neural networks to create human-like content based on its learnings.
The way algorithms capture ideas is similar to how humans gather inspiration from previous experiences to create something unique. Based on the large amounts of data used to craft generative AI’s learning abilities, it’s capable of outputting high-quality responses that are similar to what a human would create.
However, some concerns need to be addressed:
- Biased information: Artificial intelligence is only as good as the datasets used to train it. Therefore if the data used to train it has biases, it may create “ideas” that are equally biased or flawed.
- Spreading misinformation: There are many concerns about the ethics of generative AI and sharing information directly from it. It’s best practice to fact-check any content written by AI to avoid putting out false or misleading information.
- Content ownership: Since content generated with AI is not generated by a human, can you ethically can claim it as your own idea? In a similar sense, the same idea could potentially be generated elsewhere by using a similar prompt. Copywriting and ownership are then called into question here.
- Data and privacy: Data privacy is always a top-of-mind concern. With the new capabilities of artificial intelligence, data handling becomes even more challenging. It’s always best practice to avoid using sensitive information with any form of generative AI.
By keeping these limitations in mind, generative AI has the potential to streamline processes and revolutionize the way we work – just as technology has always done in the past.
10 generative AI uses for A/B testing
In the A/B testing world, we are very interested in how one can harness these technological breakthroughs for experimentation. We are brainstorming a few approaches to re-imagine the process of revolutionizing digital customer experiences to ultimately save time and resources.
Just like everyone else, we started to wonder how generative AI could impact the world of experimentation and our customers. Here are some ideas, some of them concrete and some more abstract, as to how artificial intelligence could help our industry:
DISCLAIMER: Before uploading information into any AI platform, ensure that you understand their privacy and security practices. While AI models strive to maintain a privacy standard, there’s always the risk of data breaches. Always protect your confidential information.
1. Homepage optimization
Your homepage is likely the first thing your visitors will see so optimization is key to staying ahead of your competitors. If you want a quick comparison of content on your homepage versus your competitors, you can feed this information into generative AI to give it a basis for understanding. Once your AI is loaded with information about your competitors, you can ask for a list of best practices to employ to make new tests for your own website.
2. Analyze experimentation results
Reporting and analyzing are crucial to progressing on your experimentation roadmap, but it’s also time-consuming. By collecting a summary of testing logs, generative AI can help highlight important findings, summarize your results, and potentially even suggest future steps. Ideally, you can feed your A/B test hypothesis as well as the results to show your thought process and organization. After it recognizes this specific thought process and desired results, it could aid in generating new test hypotheses or suggestions.
3. Recommend optimization barriers
Generative AI can help you prioritize your efforts and identify the most impactful barriers to your conversion rate. Uploading your nonsensitive website performance data gathered from your analytics platforms can give AI the insight it needs into your performance. Whether it suggests that you update your title tags or compress images on your homepage, AI can quickly spot where you have the biggest drop-offs to suggest areas for optimization.
4. Client reviews
User feedback is your own treasure trove of information for optimization. One of the great benefits of AI that we already see is that it can understand large amounts of data quickly and summarize it. By uploading client reviews, surveys and other consumer feedback into the database, generative AI can assist you in creating detailed summaries of your users’ pain points, preferences and levels of satisfaction. The more detailed your reviews – the better the analysis will be.
5. Chatbots
Chatbots are a popular way to communicate with website visitors. As generative AI is a large language model, it can quickly generate conversational scripts, prompts and responses to reduce your brainstorming time. You can also use AI to filter and analyze conversations that your chatbot is already having to determine if there are gaps in the conversation or ways to enhance its interaction with customers.
6. Translation
Language barriers can limit a brand that has a presence in multiple regions. Whether you need translations for your chatbot conversations, CTAs or longer form copy, generative AI can provide you with translations in real time to save you time and make your content accessible to all zones touched by your brand.
7. Google Adwords
Speed up brainstorming sessions by using generative AI to experiment with different copy variations. Based on the prompts you provide, AI can provide you with a series of ideas for targeting keywords and creating copy with a particular tone of voice to use with Google Adwords. Caution: be sure to double-check all keywords proposed to verify their intent.
8. Personalization
Personalized content can be scaled at speed by leveraging artificial intelligence to produce variations of the same messages. By customizing your copy, recommendations, product suggestions and other messages based on past user interactions and consumer demographics, you can significantly boost your digital consumer engagement.
9. Product Descriptions
Finding the best wording to describe why your product is worth purchasing may be a challenge. With generative AI, you can get more ambitious with your product descriptions by testing out different variations of copy to see which version is the most promising for your visitors.
10. Predict User Behavior
Based on historical data from your user behavior, generative AI can predict behavior that can help you to anticipate your next A/B test. Tailoring your tests according to patterns and trends in user interaction can help you conduct better experiments. It’s important to note that predictions will be limited to patterns interpreted by past customer data collected and uploaded. Using generative AI is better when it’s used as a tool to guide you in your decision-making process rather than to be the deciding force alone.
The extensive use of artificial intelligence is a new and fast-evolving subject in the tech world. If you want to leverage it in the future, you need to start familiarizing yourself with its capabilities.
Keep in mind that it’s important to verify the facts and information AI generates just as you carefully verify data before you upload. Using generative AI in conjunction with your internal experts and team resources can assist in improving ideation and efficiency. However, the quality of the output from generative AI is only as good as what you put in.
Is generative AI a source of competitive advantage in A/B testing?
The great news is that this technology is accessible to everyone – from big industry leaders like Google to start-ups with a limited budget. However, the not-so-great news is that this is available to everyone. In other words, generative AI is not necessarily a source of competitive advantage.
Technology existing by itself does not create more value for a business. Rather, it’s the people driving the technology who are creating value by leveraging it in combination with their own industry-specific knowledge, past experiences, data collection and interpretation capabilities and understanding of customer needs and pain points.
While we aren’t here to say that generative AI is a replacement for human-generated ideas, this technology can definitely be used to complement and amplify your already-existing skills.
Leveraging generative AI in A/B testing
From education to copywriting or coding – all industries are starting to see the impact that these new software developments will have. Leveraging “large language models” is becoming increasingly popular as these algorithms can generate ideas, summarize long forms of text, provide insights and even translate in real-time.
Proper experimentation and A/B testing are at the core of engaging your audience, however, these practices can take a lot of time and resources to accomplish successfully. If generative AI can offer you ways to save time and streamline your processes, it might be time to use it as your not-so-secret weapon. In today’s competitive digital environment, continually enhancing your online presence should be at the top of your mind.
Want to start optimizing your website? AB Tasty is the best-in-class experience optimization platform that empowers you to create a richer digital experience – fast. From experimentation to personalization, this solution can help you activate and engage your audience to boost your conversions.
