A/B testing published content

Technical Questions
1

When trying to create an A/B test for already published content you are instructed to duplicate the content first. With the duplicated content you can create an A/B test but what happens if you publish duplicated content using the same URL-path as the already published content?

If I recall correctly this is not how it used to work in the past, you could create an A/B test on already published content without having to duplicate the published content?

Should you unpublish the published content before publishing the duplicated content containing the A/B test or how does builder deal with two published pages using the same URL-path (the original published content and the duplicated default for the test). Please clarify :slight_smile:

2

Hello @hfrid,

If you create a duplicate page to run an A/B test in Builder.io, the new page will replace the original as the live version when published. This occurs because the duplicated page appears higher in the page list, making it the first version Builder.io identifies for that URL.

To Conduct an A/B Test Effectively:

  1. Duplicate the Page:

    • Open the page’s settings (three dots in the upper-right corner) and select “Duplicate”.

  2. Create Variations:

    • In the content entry, go to the A/B Tests tab.
    • Click “Add A/B Test Variation”, then configure the variation’s content and traffic distribution.

  3. Publish the Variation:

    • Once published, the variation will be served to users based on the A/B test rules you’ve set.

Important: If you don’t duplicate the entry before ending the test, non-selected variations will not be saved. Duplicating the original entry first ensures all variations are retained for future use or analysis.

For detailed guidance, refer to the official Builder.io A/B Testing Documentation.

When you have multiple versions of a content entry, Builder uses specific criteria to determine which content entry to deliver.

The criteria that Builder uses to choose the content entry to deliver are:

  1. The content entries must be published; if they are scheduled, their scheduled publication must include the current date and time.
  2. Any targeting attributes must be met.
  3. Builder starts evaluating from the top of the content list. If two published content entries both meet the first two criteria, Builder chooses the one that comes first in the list.

Consider the following example of three versions of an about page; about , about 2 , and about 3 . All content entries have the same URL, with one currently published and two other versions scheduled one after the other.

The screenshot below shows the example about page versions in Builder. The one on the bottom of the list will always be fetched as long as it’s published unless about 2 or about 3 are published, which is during the time between the start and end dates for those schedules.

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To know more, you can refer to the following documentation Schedule Content - Builder.io

I hope this helps!

Thanks,