A/B testing is a technique whereby different users get a different version of an application of website. This allows you test new features ‘in the wild’ and allows to check which experience or functionality is preferred. Facebook uses this technique a lot, but it’s also a useful technique for the ‘non-facebooks’ of the world.
Doing A/B testing in Azure Websites is really easy. It is supported out-of-the-box by using multiple deployment slots. Let’s walk through the steps:
- Open the Azure Management Portal. Use the new portal available at https://portal.azure.com/. The A/B testing functionality can only be configured there.
- Create a new Website. Choose a URL, Web Hosting Plan(Deployment slots are only available when you use a Standard plan), Resource Group, Subscription and Location(or just use the defaults
). Click on Create.
- Once the website is created, open the blade of the site and look for the Deployment slots section.
- Click on Deployment Slots to load the Deployment Slots blade. Click on Add Slot to create a new deployment slot.
- Specify the name of the slot(this will become part of the URL) and click OK.
- Create and deploy 2 versions of your site to the different deployment slots. More information how to do this can be found here: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/web-sites-staged-publishing/
- Now you have 2 versions of your site up and running, it’s time to configure the A/B testing. This feature is available through the ‘Testing in Production’ configuration setting.
- Click on the Testing in production configuration. The configuration blade is loaded. For every slot, you can specify how much of the traffic is going to one of the slots or the production site. Click Save to apply the changes.
