Why We Built a Visual Editor That Doesn’t Cut Corners

Introducing ABsmartly’s Visual Editor Chrome Extension for Accessible Experimentation

The best experiments don’t always start in code. Sometimes, they start with a spark of curiosity and a team ready to move.

At ABsmartly, we’ve always believed that the strongest experiments are developer-led, crafted with precision and statistical rigor. That part hasn’t changed. But we’ve also listened to the teams around us, marketers, growth leads, and operators, who told us something simple but important: sometimes, you just need to test something quickly… and there’s no developer in sight.

That’s why we built our Visual Editor Browser Extension, because great ideas shouldn’t wait until the backlog clears. It’s designed to remove blockers and bring experimentation within reach, giving non-technical teams the power to launch tests directly, opening experimentation to everyone. 

The Access Gap in Experimentation

Experimentation works best when it’s woven into the fabric of decision-making. The most innovative organizations don’t just test in product, they test in marketing, operations, pricing, and everywhere insight can spark improvement. But in practice, teams often hit roadblocks long before they can even start. For product and engineering teams, experimentation might feel like second nature. They already have the tools, processes, and technical expertise to set up clean, trustworthy tests. But for marketing teams, growth functions, or smaller organizations, the story often looks very different.

Without direct developer access, running even a small test can turn into a drawn-out process. A marketer might spot a conversion blocker in the checkout flow, or a growth lead might want to validate a new landing page variation, but instead of testing asap, they have to wait in a queue until the devs have time to help them. By the time the change goes live, the moment’s passed. Campaigns lose momentum, insights come too late, and ideas that could have been transformative sometimes never get tested at all.

For leadership, this creates a disconnect. They want to scale a culture of experimentation and encourage every team to contribute insights and test bold ideas. But instead, some teams are empowered to run experiments daily, while others are stuck watching from the sidelines. This leads to fragmented experimentation. Valuable ideas often don’t make it into the pipeline, which means the organization is testing at only half its potential.

Traditional visual editors promised a fix: a way to make quick changes directly on a page without needing code. On the surface, it looked like a way to democratize experimentation, but there were catches…

Shortcuts Aren’t the Same as Solutions

When visual editors first appeared, it felt like a eureka moment. Suddenly, non-technical teams could drag, drop, and run experiments without ever producing a line of code. For teams starved of developer time, it looked like the perfect workaround, a way to encourage experimentation across the organization, without needing to write a single line of code. However, like most shortcuts, it was often too good to be true. Visual editors solved the access problem, yes, but they also introduced a whole new set of challenges. 

Tracking that doesn’t tell the truth. Most visual editors don’t capture exposure in a scientifically sound way. Some track everyone who lands on a page, whether or not they saw the change. Others only track modifications on the variant the user is in, which means that different variants measure different sets of users. In one case, the result is diluted, in the other the data is biased, and both undermine trust in the experiment.

A poor user experience. Because changes are applied in the browser after the page loads, users often see elements flicker, shift, or disappear as the test executes. The more complex the test, the more disruptive it becomes. Instead of supporting a culture of experimentation, these flaws erode confidence in the testing process and damage the user experience.

Promises that don’t scale. Visual editors make experimentation look like a breeze in demos, but once teams try to apply them at scale, all too often the cracks start to show. Performance issues, messy data, and implementation limitations pile up quickly. Teams find that experiments, which start as quick wins, often end in frustration, yielding results they can’t fully trust and learning they can’t apply.

For a company like ABsmartly, built on the principle of rigorous experimentation, these trade-offs were never acceptable. We knew that if we were going to deliver a visual editor, it couldn’t just be another shortcut. It had to earn the same trust as the rest of our platform with scientific accuracy, real performance, and full confidence in every result.

Finally, a Visual Editor You Can Trust

We didn’t set out to build just another visual editor. We built one that could actually stand up to the standards we hold ourselves to and the experience your teams deserve. Because when you’re serious about experimentation, “good enough” isn’t good enough. We talked to customers. We examined the trade-offs. Then, founder Jonas Alves and the team designed a visual editor that delivers speed without sacrificing trust, all backed by the same rigor ABsmartly is known for. The result is a Visual Editor that encourages non-technical teams to run experiments quickly, while ensuring the integrity of the data remains intact, even for experiments that make changes below the fold or inside tooltips, which should be triggeredonly when the user actually sees the change, not at page load.

Here’s what sets it apart:

• Accurate tracking, built in. Only users who actually experience a change are tracked, avoiding the noisy data and sample ratio mismatches that plague other visual editors.
  
  

• One platform, not two. No more toggling between tools to get speed or precision. With ABsmartly, everything lives in one place: your experimentation platform. That means consistent data, better collaboration, and fewer ways for things to fall through the cracks.

Built for every team, not just engineers. Marketing, growth, product, content, anyone can launch a test in minutes. But developers still stay in the loop. It’s not a black box. They can validate the changes done via the visual editor. The changes are completely visible in a json payload passed as a variant config. A single experiment can have changes done via the visual editor and at the same time have backend changes, implemented by the developer. It allows for structural experiments, to help scale what works. It’s shared ownership, not silos.

It’s fast where you need it to be, and rigorous where it has to be. In other words, it’s a Visual Editor built the ABsmartly way. 

When Testing Becomes a Team Sport

With the Visual Editor, experimentation becomes more accessible across your organization. Marketing teams can test messaging on landing pages. Growth teams can validate layout changes before devs commit resources. Smaller teams can try bold ideas without waiting in a backlog.

But accessibility doesn’t mean compromise. Every experiment launched through the Visual Editor is not different from any other experiment. It runs on the same statistical engine that powers all ABsmartly tests with exposure tracking, real-time monitoring, and scientificallysound results built in. That means your teams can move faster without sacrificing confidence in the results. By lowering the barrier to testing, more people start asking “What if?” Momentum builds. Decisions get evidentially better. That’s how experimentation grows, not just as a tool, but as a mindset.

Testing With Confidence, Company-Wide

The Visual Editor is part of our mission to make experimentation more accessible and more central to how companies make decisions. At ABsmartly, we know something others often forget: great experimentation cultures aren’t built on tools alone; they’re built on trust. Trust that your data is accurate. Trust that your results mean something. Trust that every team can contribute ideas worth testing. By introducing the Visual Editor, we’re opening the door wider, giving more people the chance to ask better questions and get reliable answers faster.

We’re meeting teams where they are and helping everyone move faster without sacrificing confidence. When every team can ask questions and get reliable answers, your business gets actionable insights quicker.

Ready to scale experimentation without cutting corners? Let us walk you through how our ABsmartly LaunchPad Visual Editor helps every team move fast and test with confidence. To install, search