I see a lot of talk of A/B testing — mostly around web design. Most often this is concerning things like the text on the landing page that the user first sees, by which the user decides if they are going to stick around or bail. Or the location and size of a ‘Buy’ button, or the colors, or a main graphic. The idea is that this goes mostly unnoticed by users. For example you could put a big blue ‘Buy’ button in the middle of your landing page for a month, and track how many visitors you get compared to how many people click on the button. You could then move the button to the left column, check the stats, compare, and repeat with a different variation until you feel like you’ve found the sweet spot.

But recently I saw what I thought was a type of A/B testing with a printed publication — something I had never personally noticed. I was in Powell’s Bookstore and happened to notice a copy of Inc. Magazine that I hadn’t yet received in the mail. It had Nick Sarillo, founder of Nick’s Pizza & Pub in Illinois on the cover. So a week or two passed and I still hadn’t gotten it, so I called up the magazine and told them I hadn’t received it. They promptly sent me a new copy. When I received it and started flipping through, I thought “Geez, this is weird, I HAVE read this one.” So I went into my office and realized that I had indeed received the same issue, but it had a slightly different cover. The background color was the same, as was most of the text. But there were a couple slight differences. One had Nick Sarillo on the it, and on the other was Jeremy Stopelman, the CEO of Yelp!. And the headline at the top and the headline in the center were reversed on each.

“Wow, cool! Inc. is doing A/B testing with their covers!” But after thinking about it further I couldn’t figure out how A/B testing would work in the world of printed magazines. After-all, it’s just one issue that’s on stands for just a few weeks. Sure, you might learn which cover sells better, but after that it’s off the stands and you’re dealing with a new cover anyway. After some digging around, I didn’t find many details about this other than that it seems like this was special to this issue and that it’s not something Inc. does with frequently. On the Inc. website there’s a brief mention of it that makes it sound like one cover was for the newsstands, while the other was for subscribers. That could very well be the case, though I’d still be curious of the reasoning. Maybe it was all just in fun, but it definitely got me thinking about how they might use A/B testing in the future. I’m curious to hear your thoughts.