Create an A/B Test

From the Activities list, click Create Activity > A/B Test.

From the Create A/B Test Activity dialog, select Visual (Default), if necessary.

If you prefer to use the Form-Based Experience Composer, select Form. See Form-Based Experience Composer for more information.

(Conditional) If you are a Target Premium customer, from the Choose Workspace drop-down list, choose a workspace.

The Choose Workplace option in the preceding illustration is a Target Premium feature and might not display if your organization has a Target Standard license.

In the Enter Activity URL box, specify your activity URL, then click Create.

If your account is configured with a default URL, that URL appears by default. You can change from the default to another URL if necessary.

The Visual Experience Composer opens, showing the page specified in the URL.

Click Untitled Activity at the top of the VEC, then specify a name for the activity in the space provided.

The activity name cannot begin with any of the following characters:

The activity name cannot contain any of the following character sequences:

Create any new experiences by changing the elements on the page.

The Visual Experience Composer displays two tabs on the left side after you create a new activity: Experience A and Experience B. Experience A is the control experience. Your focus is on the Experience B tab, which you can modify as desired. Experience B is the alternate experience that you can add to your test. You can add multiple experiences to the test. You can also delete Experience A from the activity if you don’t want to include a default site experience as an option.

For more information about adding and modifying experiences in the Visual Experience Composer, see Add Experience. To modify Experience B, start with Step 2.

Click Targeting at the top of the Visual Experience Composer to move to the next step in the three-step guided workflow.

The flow diagram opens.

The flow diagram leads you through the steps of choosing the audience for the activity and setting up experiences.

In the Audience box, click the edit icon (the vertical ellipsis), click Replace Audience, then select the audience for your activity.

By default, the audience is set to All Visitors.

Choose the percentage of qualifying visitors that you want to enter the activity.

For example, you might limit entries to 50% of all visitors or 45% of your “Californians” audience.

Set up your traffic allocation.

You can show multiple experiences to the same audience. A diagram displays showing your selected audience and the experiences that you added to the activity.

Choose your desired traffic allocation method:

• Manual (Default): Specify the percentage of entrants that you want to see each experience. You can split the percentages evenly between all experiences, or specify higher or lower percentages for each experience. The total for all experiences must equal 100%.

• Auto-allocate to best experience: Most activity entrants are automatically directed to higher-performing experiences. Some visitors are allocated to all experiences, to maintain exploration of experiences and to recognize changes in performance trends. For more information, see Auto-Allocate overview.

• Auto-target for personalized experiences: Target uses advanced machine learning to personalize content and drive conversions by identifying multiple high-performing, marketer-defined experiences, and then serving the most tailored experience to visitors based on their individual customer profiles and past behaviors of similar visitors. For more information, see Auto-Target overview.

You can also click Add to add another experience to the activity.

When you are satisfied with your audience, experience choices, and traffic allocation choices, click Next to move to the third step of the three-step guided workflow.

Specify the goals and settings for the activity.

Click Save & Close or Save.