Today we’re excited to announce Nelio A/B Testing 8.5, one of the biggest usability updates we’ve shipped in a long time. While this release includes a good number of fixes and improvements under the hood, our main focus has been much simpler: Help users succeed faster and keep optimizing over time.
We’ve spent the last few months analyzing how customers interact with Nelio A/B Testing. One insight became immediately apparent: getting started with A/B testing can be intimidating, especially for users who have never run an experiment before. And even if you know what you’re doing, you may end up running out of ideas… Nelio A/B Testing 8.5 tackles both problems head-on.
Let’s take a look.
A Brand-New Welcome Experience
Starting with version 8.5, every new user is welcomed with a completely redesigned onboarding experience designed to help them launch their first meaningful test as quickly as possible.
More Quota When It Matters Most
Running a successful A/B test requires traffic.
Unfortunately, one of the biggest challenges for new users is that their websites often don’t receive enough page views to collect meaningful results before reaching the free plan’s monthly quota.
To solve this, we’ve introduced a temporary quota boost. If your website is publicly accessible, Nelio A/B Testing now automatically increases your available quota during your first 14 days. This gives new users enough room to:
- Launch real experiments.
- Collect meaningful traffic.
- Reach statistically significant results.
- Properly evaluate the benefits of A/B testing.
Instead of hitting quota limits before seeing results, you now have two full weeks to experience what Nelio A/B Testing can really do. Because we believe the best way to understand the value of experimentation is simply… by experimenting.
Nelio A/B Testing
Native Tests for WordPress
Use your WordPress page editor to create variants and run powerful tests with just a few clicks. No coding skills required.
Meet Your New AI-Powered Optimization Assistant
Starting an A/B test isn’t difficult. Deciding what to test often is. That’s why the new Welcome screen includes an AI-powered homepage analysis.
Once your site is connected, Nelio AI analyzes your homepage and recommends a handful of tests tailored to your content.
Rather than presenting an empty dashboard, Nelio now helps answer one of the most common questions new users have: What should I test first?
At the moment, recommendations focus on CSS and Text tests, because they’re among the simplest, fastest, and most effective tests you can run. Changing a headline, improving a call-to-action, refining a paragraph of copy or adjusting the visual appearance of a key section often leads to meaningful improvements with very little effort. They also make excellent first tests, allowing users to become familiar with the workflow before moving on to more advanced optimization strategies.
Once you’ve selected one of the proposed opportunities, Nelio automatically creates the test for you, dramatically reducing the effort required to get started.
A New Overview Designed Around Continuous Optimization
Another major addition in Nelio A/B Testing 8.5 is the completely redesigned Overview screen.
Instead of acting as a simple landing page, the new Overview becomes the central hub for your optimization strategy.
Everything you need is now available at a glance.
Introducing the Optimization Score
One of the most visible additions is the brand-new Optimization Score.
The idea behind the score is simple: Optimization isn’t about running one successful experiment—it’s about building an ongoing process of continuous improvement.
The Optimization Score helps you quickly assess how healthy that process is by considering factors such as:
- Experiment activity.
- Coverage of important pages.
- Overall optimization progress.
- Remaining opportunities.
It’s not intended to be a perfect scientific metric, but just a practical indicator that helps identify whether your optimization efforts are moving in the right direction and reminds you that there’s almost always another opportunity waiting to be explored.
Never Wonder What to Test Next
One of our favorite additions in this release is the new Recommendations section. Once again, our goal is to eliminate the “blank page” problem.
Many users successfully complete an experiment… and then stop. Not because they’ve finished optimizing their website. Just because they don’t know what to optimize next.
The new recommendation engine continuously looks for promising testing opportunities across your website and suggests pages that deserve attention.
Recommendations are generated using a variety of heuristics, including:
- Your homepage.
- Recently published content.
- High-traffic pages.
- Important pages such as Pricing or Contact pages.
- Pages linked from your site’s navigation menu.
- Pages that were tested a long time ago.
- Pages that recently finished an experiment and may benefit from a follow-up test.
Instead of asking yourself: “What should I test now?” Nelio A/B Testing will proactively suggest your next opportunities. Our goal is to transform experimentation from a one-time project into an ongoing optimization habit.
Quick Access to Your Most Important Tests
The new Overview also highlights your latest activity.
You’ll immediately see:
- Currently running experiments.
- Recently completed experiments.
- Quick shortcuts to resume your work.
Whether you want to monitor active tests or review recently completed ones, everything is only one click away.
A Better Experience for Everyone
Although the Welcome screen and the new Overview are undoubtedly the highlights of this release, Nelio A/B Testing 8.5 also includes many smaller improvements, performance optimizations, and bug fixes that make the plugin more robust and easier to use:
- Add filter
nab_can_{$experiment_type}_be_startedto check if a test can be started - Add filter
nab_get_testable_custom_post_typesto customize testable custom post types - Allow restricting page view tracking to subset of test scope
- Boost available quota for new users during their first 14 days
- Fix Google Analytics tracking setting
- Fix Traffic Analysis setting
- Fix to ensure automatic goals remain first when sorting goals
- Make excluded IPs available to everyone
- Move heatmaps local directory from
WP_CONTENT_DIRtowp_get_uploads_dir() - Optimize page attributes by setting value in store and prevent re-renders
- Prevent unauthorized requests to Nelio A/B Testing’s API
- Refactor code editor into its own package to fix issue with i18n strings
- Show estimated page views to reach 90% confidence
- Store site URLs using a home URL placeholder
Ready to Start Optimizing?
Nelio A/B Testing 8.5 is all about helping users succeed sooner and continue improving over time. Whether you’re launching your very first experiment or continuously optimizing a mature website, we hope these new features make experimentation easier, more accessible and, above all, more effective.
As always, we’d love to hear your feedback. Update to Nelio A/B Testing 8.5.0, explore the new onboarding and Overview experience, and let us know what you think!
Featured Image by Frankie Cordoba on Unsplash.
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