Introducing Layers: Enabling Coordinated Experimentation

Making mutual exclusions, rollouts, and no-code experiments simpler than ever

Eric Metelka

Before joining Eppo as Head of Product, Eric led experimentation programs at companies like Cameo and Cars.com

Today, we’re excited to launch Layers. This release combines the flexibility of Eppo feature flags with the structure to easily coordinate concurrent tests.

There are scenarios where you may want to test different variations simultaneously on the same area of your product. However, allowing these experiments to overlap can lead to conflicts and degrade the user experience. Eppo's new Layers functionality solves this by enabling you to create dedicated spaces for running mutually exclusive experiments.

A More Structured Approach

‎Previous approaches to handling concurrent tests involved complex coordination or creating dependencies between flags. With Layers, you can easily set up a structured environment that keeps your experiments isolated while providing controls over traffic allocation and ordering of experiments.

Each Layer acts as a contained space with the following levels:

Experiment opt-out rule - set an exclusion group here that always sees the same experience, such as internal users that always see the new experience
Experiments - use this level to serve concurrent experiments with the ability to set the traffic exposure of each experiment
Rollout - once an experiment concludes, you can easily select the winning variant and roll it out to all unallocated users
Default serving rule - set the control variation users see when not exposed to an experiment or rollout

This streamlined workflow minimizes coordination overhead and ensures your experiments don't interfere with each other's results, while giving you the power to exclude users and roll out winning variations as soon as they’re selected.

Rigorous Controls, Simplified Process

‎Eppo applies the same powerful statistical engines and guardrails to experiments run in Layers as our core experimentation product. You'll get automated diagnostics, traffic balance monitoring, and our full suite of analysis tools to properly measure impact.

Creating a new Layer is simple - just navigate to Configuration, enter details like the Layer name and parameters, and you're ready to start adding experiments. Need to roll out a winning variation? With one click, you can update the Layer's default experience.

Utilize Parameters to Create No-code Experiences

‎Parameters are the core building blocks that allow you to define the specific elements you want to test variations of within a Layer.

For example, let's say you want to experiment with different messaging headlines on your product's homepage. You could create a Parameter called "headline_text" and set a default value. Then, as you set up each experiment variation within that Layer, you can specify alternative text values to test.

Parameters can accept various data types like strings, numbers, booleans etc. This flexibility enables you to test everything from UI styling and design elements to pricing variants and feature configurations - all within the same Layer construct.

Additionally, this means parameter values can drive experience changes without updating code. This no-code solution makes it easy to increase the number of variations you test and experiments you run to find the optimal solution to your hypothesis.

Experimenting Together

Whether it's a product and marketing team collaborating on a page, or parallel AI experiments, Layers enable your organization to maximize learnings through disciplined, concurrent experimentation.

Interested in using Layers? Eppo customers with Feature Flags can start leveraging this feature immediately. If you're new to Eppo, we invite you to request a demo to see how Layers can enhance your experimentation program.