All ContentThe Business Critical Impact of Experimentation
The Business Critical Impact of Experimentation
THE BUSINESS CRITICAL IMPACT OF EXPERIMENTATION
Introduction
Measuring the true influence of your marketing initiatives on business growth has always been
a tricky undertaking, especially in today’s multi-touch, hyper-competitive, lightning-paced digital
marketplace. The practice of experimentation has helped companies to test, iterate, and ultimately
double-down on the tactics that are most impactful. eTail, the global e-commerce event series,
partnered with Optimizely, the world’s leading experimentation platform in Q1 2017 to survey 136
leading retail executives representing a broad range of company sizes and industries to explore
these concepts more deeply.
The survey revealed some ground-breaking insight around how retailers are resourcing
their experimentation program, allocating their testing budgets, how experimentation results
are improving their businesses, and the barriers they face in implementing a purposeful
testing strategy.
Retailers with low experimentation maturity tend to experience lower sales than their
counterparts who have built a culture of testing and experimentation. As you read the report
you see a clear link between investment in testing and revenue generation. However, budget
is still currently the greatest barrier to implementing a purposeful testing/experimentation
strategy, which is reliant on having to right evidence to achieve stakeholder buy-in.
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THE BUSINESS CRITICAL IMPACT OF EXPERIMENTATION
Key Findings
Experimentation plays a major role in revenue growth within organizations of all sizes and
stages of maturity. There’s no such thing as outgrowing the need to test. A strong experimentation
program will continue to produce results within both growing retailers and their more
mature counterparts.
Continuous optimization is what experimentation is all about, and that practice of fine-tuning
pays off in real dollars. Half of respondents saw greater than 5% commerce growth that they
attribute to testing year-over-year. Only one in five respondents saw less than 1% growth. 64%
of respondents are also allocating testing-related head count to Marketing.
Early adopters are seeing major dividends from their testing program. Currently, a leading 6% of
respondents attribute over 20% of their commerce growth to their experimentation programs.
Within a leading group of digital retailers, key business stakeholders and their teams recognize a
link between experimentation and the creation of actionable insights that can lead to increased
revenue. Out of respondents who are growing their testing investments in 2017, 36% are growing
their testing budgets by over 20% year-over-year. On the other hand, when it comes to the barriers
that are holding the majority of respondents back from implementing winning tests, budget
was the most commonly cited issue, indicating that those who have taken a lead in investing
in experimentation are reaping the rewards as early adopters, while their peers are held back
from their full potential.
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Early adopters
are seeing major
dividends from their
testing program.
Currently, a leading
6% of respondents
attribute over 20%
of their commerce
growth to their
experimentation
programs.
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