feature: A/B testing

Test headlines, intros and images

A/B testing of headlines, intros or images should be a natural part of every digital newsroom’s workflow.

It’s one of the simplest ways to strengthen your editorial output, offering reliable and lasting improvements in how your website performs, all for a relatively small effort.

Our A/B testing tool is called Tentacles. This feature can be used directly on your homepage and index pages, which allows you to fully optimise them. You can run A/B tests on headlines, intros and images to increase audience loyalty and raise CTRs. If you have smartocto.ai, the system can even generate headline suggestions for you.

How it works

For a brief period, sometimes only a few minutes, smartocto will show headline, intro or image variants to different audience segments. A visitor opening the website may see something different from their neighbour opening the app.

• If and when a clear winner emerges, the system automatically presents that headline to all new visitors.
• If no winner can be identified within the set timeframe (say, 20 minutes), the system either advises no action or suggests running another test.
• If a headline is more popular, but loyalty click rate is behind, the less popular variant will be visible. It’s not all about clicks.

A/B testing will result in better overall performance, as our data research showed.