A/B Testing and Random Selection
A/B Testing or Random Selection in the browser and on the server
Are you looking for an A/B framework? Something you can use in the browser to toggle a user experience - do they see marketing promotion #1, or a picture of a cat?
Or are you interested in random selection - you want to send our 5000 emails of differing types, and see how users respond?
Either way, enter laboratory. A simple framework that allows random selection or A/B testing. With the added bonus of being usable anywhere you can load JavaScript.
An example for random selection:
laboratory = new Laboratory()
laboratory.addExperiment("FuzzyBunnies")
.variant "variant0", 50,
name: "Peter Rabbit"
type: "Wooly"
.variant "variant1", 50,
subject: "Briar Rabbit"
type: "Silky"
experiment = laboratory.run("FuzzyBunnies")
experiment.value # Either Peter or Briar Rabbit
In this example, the user would get either Peter or Briar. If you ran the experiment again you’d get another set of random values irregardless of the user.
To use the A/B features you need to provide laboratory with some kind of storage mechanism to store the selected options for the user. On the client side, we usually use a thin wrapper over localStore.
Your storage needs to implement two methods:
class Store
# stores the experiment results (as the variant name selected) for this user
addResult: (experimentName, variantName) -> {}
# retrieves a variant result if the user has already seen this experiment
get: (experimentName) -> {}
If you want to give the user the same experiment every time they come to your site simply pass in your storage to the laboratory when you declare it.
laboratory = new Laboratory(new Store())