Who are audience/user for Content Testing?

Question

I am newbie for content testing. Once start testing using optimization tool(under experience editor) Is testing variation published to CD server and view by external user.

Please suggest.

Answer 1

I like to think about Content Testing like the scientific method: you have a guess (hypothesis) and then you have to try it out (experiment) and then you see if it worked (measure and learn).

Content Testing for Variant Experiments

Typically, it is a marketer or author who is interested in Content Testing. They have some piece of content on the page and they aren't sure it's the best way of doing that. They have a hypothesis (an alternate version) that they think might be better.

They might also be in a situation where they want to add new content but aren't sure what to add, so they create a few versions to find out which is best.

Running the test is the experiment. As it runs, different visitors will see the different variations. When the test is complete, you now see which one worked the best (winner).

Content Testing for Audience Discovery

With Cortex, you also have the concept of Personalization Suggestions. This uses the data from a Content Test to determine which variants worked for different types of visitors.

So, in this case, rather than trying to determine a 'best' option, what you are actually doing is creating multiple variants that you want to use and then testing to find out which audiences react to which content.

You can then personalize for each audience with the appropriate content that works for them. This also allows you to learn about the different audiences that are coming to your site, which in and of itself might be useful for planning out future work.