A/B Testing: Anti-Flicker

Reduce “flash of original content” while a variant applies.

What Anti-Flicker Does

  • Temporarily hides only the elements under test, not the whole page
  • Reveals them as soon as the variant is applied
  • Always reveals them after 2 seconds at most, even if the variant hasn’t applied, so nothing stays hidden

Tradeoffs

  • On a very slow connection, a visitor may briefly see an empty spot where the tested element will appear
  • If a variant can’t find its element before the fail-safe, the visitor sees the original content
Checks on a test page: variants aren't applying reliably
When a variant can't find its element, those visitors see the original. The Checks list on the test page counts the page loads where the change applied.

If your page becomes invisible

Anti-flicker must always reveal. If you see a page stuck hidden, stop the test and review the QA checklist.