Why Mature Programs Grow Faster: Speero + Kameleoon Original Research

The end of the year is approaching, and it’s time to report on your department’s progress. Maybe you’re beating the industry benchmark for improving programs. But for three consecutive years, Speero found little change in experimentation maturity levels. Progress has been stagnant.

I get it. Most of us have unachievably long to-do lists. Some things end up on the backlog. The question is, is it worth prioritizing improvements to your experimentation program over other tasks?

The short answer is yes. We know from Kameleoon's research that businesses with mature testing programs are 69% more likely to grow significantly. It’s that simple. The more mature your testing program, the faster you can identify ideas that will make your company grow. 

If you’re wondering what factors impact experimentation maturity the most, read on. We examined Kameleoon and Speero's industry research and benchmarking data to identify two critical factors that should be top of your priority list.

The biggest factors holding (your) experimentation back  

Experimentation lives in a silo

Don’t hide experimentation away in the corner where only the data scientists can get to it. High-growth businesses take a multi-team approach to testing. Kameleoon found that companies, where product and marketing growth strategies are aligned have an

81% chance of significant growth. When experimentation forms part of all teams' work, plans get validated, ideas are tested, and departments pull in the same direction—making the business more successful. 

Sadly, it's not as easy as just telling everyone to do A/B testing. First, teams need standardized processes, documents, and test results. According to Speero, 87% of mature experimentation programs provide standardization, which lets different teams understand test findings and base decisions on shared data. However, half of the surveyed experimentation teams don’t have a centralized repository or knowledge base to store shared test documents. Without this, you may end up with duplicated tests and inconsistent results.

Biggest impact on experimentation maturity: 

1. Standardization of test results, processes, and reporting.
2. All-department access to a shared knowledge base.
3. Experimentation is used across all teams in the business. 

Lacking the right tools and data integrations

If you want all teams to experiment, you must solve two problems:

• First, teams need to be able to build tests in their preferred way with their preferred tech stack. 
• Second, teams need to be able to share KPIs, segments, and statistics. 

They need to understand how their work affects one another. Having one unified tool makes this easier. It's not about client and/or server-side capabilities. It's about allowing teams to work together toward company-broad goals and avoid duplication or conflicts.

A unified testing tool that offers these features helps with standardization and efficiency. Correlation: organizations that view experimentation tech as a vital part of their business are more than twice as likely to achieve substantial growth.

Teams also need to integrate their user data into the testing tool. This gives everyone the same picture of the (entire) user journey, helping them create better-informed hypotheses and decisions. However, only 13% of teams have well-integrated tools, according to Speero's benchmark report 2024. This lack of integration creates data silos and prevents teams from seeing what customers do outside of their departments. You can’t make good decisions with only half the picture. 

This lack of shared data or KPIs means web teams might run a test that generates a better sign-up conversion rate. But without product KPIs, they won’t know if it generates increased product usage and paying customers. 

Even when easy data integrations are available, teams don’t integrate them. Kameleoons’ data found that only 13% of experimentation teams have three or more integrations with their testing tool. This means lost visibility on how marketing, product, customer service, and advertising impact test outcomes.  

If you need more reasons to integrate data Kameleoon found that experiments, where the testing tool had two or more integrations, were 18% more likely to have a positive outcome than experiments run with no integrations. 

Biggest impact on experimentation maturity: 

1. Access to a shared testing tool that supports client and server-side testing and allows teams to build tests in their preferred way.
2. Ability to see how one team's tests affect other teams and the company's goals.
3. How well the testing tool fits into the company's tech stack.
4. The number of data integrations across department tools/sources.

What does a mature experimentation program look like?

A mature experimentation program is more than just running a high velocity of A/B tests. To visualize where you’re going, here’s what a high-maturity program looks like: 

• Teams work together: Marketing, product, and development teams work closely together. They have shared goals, roadmaps, data insights, and growth plans. Each department understands the impact/role of the other, and most importantly, the departments are working to solve customer problems, not assumed issues.

• Everyone uses the same processes and documents: Anyone in the organization should be able to pick up a test report and know their way around it. Everyone uses the same approach for hypothesis generation, testing, and analysis, and they store all the documents and results in a central repository. 

• Access to user data: Whether they’re using a Customer Data Platform or Data Warehouse, mature teams will have a place to gather data across all touchpoints. An access request shouldn't be required every time a product manager wants to see web traffic. 

• Tools that can scale: Mature programs run multiple experiments simultaneously because they have a testing tool that supports client and server-side testing. Their tool provides a  WYSIWYG editor and works with fully coded tests to support different build methods across teams. They’ve also been savvy and picked a compliant tool that keeps up with industry changes, e.g., HIPAA-compliant, GDPR-compliant, and AI-enabled. Choosing the wrong tool invites chaos as your tech team will need to re-integrate it, and teams will need to learn another tool. 

• Friends at the top table: Mature testing programs have senior allies who advocate for resources and support.  

Steps toward a mature experimentation program

Start by assessing your current maturity using the Speero Experimentation Program Benchmark. The audit can be shared with other stakeholders to push a business case to improve, especially when multiple stakeholders' scores are analyzed and compared together. Key areas to identify are similar low scores (agreed areas to improve) and divergent scores (pinpointing teams or areas to improve.)

Scoring maturity over time can help map improvements and growth, especially if several people take the audit. It can benchmark and be used in performance reviews and demonstrate abilities to improve culture as well as end results You’ll get an overview of your entire testing process, including;

• Culture & Strategy
• People & Skills
• Process & Governance
• Data and Tooling

Get the basics right, then scale

Before you get multiple teams testing, ramp up velocity, or run advanced tests, ensure you have the basics functioning well for a small team. This means you should have; 

• An easy-to-follow test process (hypothesis development, prioritization, QA, analysis, etc.) 
• Templates for all the documents needed, e.g., test reports, roadmaps, etc.
• A shared knowledge base that is easy to use and search. It should contain all the test results in the same format. 
• A testing tool that supports client and server-side testing and complies with regulations. 
• A process to get data integrations set up. These should already be in place for your small initial team. 
• Regular tests running without issue. 

Once you have the above nailed, you can expand experimentation to other teams and tackle new business problems or more advanced testing. 

Your future 

Whether you’re just starting or looking to scale your program, the time to act is now. Build a solid foundation, and then make small, continuous improvements. Spending time to improve your experimentation maturity can unlock new opportunities for growth and business success.

Ready to get started? Kameleoon is a unified experimentation platform designed for all teams. To see how it measures up against other testing tools, visit the Speero directory.