How To: Eliminate the Guesswork from Site Design
Over the past few months, there have been several excellent summaries on website design on Geek Estate. Drew’s post talked about the 9 Essential Principles for Good Web Design and Jeff put together a great article about website design and usability and how it can make a huge difference. When discussing design changes, it can be a very grey area.
Everyone has an opinion: the CEO, the developers, the marketing team, your mom (ok, so maybe not your mom). But you get the idea.
Today, I want to introduce to you a tool that will allow you to eliminate the guesswork from site design. Yup, that’s right, no more “I like the blue button right there, because that’s what I think my users will like”. Why not let your visitors tell you what works best?
Enter Google Web Site Optimizer.
This tool (free) from Google will allow you to either A/B test your designs or use multivariate testing to determine what works best for your website. If your goal is conversions, you might be thinking, “Hey, we need more traffic” – but have you ever thought to focus on maximizing the traffic you already are getting to your site? That might be your golden ticket. By doing things like lowering your bounce rate as well as understanding your visitors better, you’ll maximize your ROI on your existing traffic.
Let’s take a quick look at how we ran an experiment at House Buyer Network. Our goal is to help motivated home sellers who want to sell my house. We wanted to understand how our visitors trust our brand a bit better.
For our testing purposes, we chose to run a simple A/B test. The test we ran looked specifically at showing our Thawte SSL Trust Seal on the home page and how that display could/would affect visitor trust in our brand. We’ve had our SSL for a long time but we didn’t show it to our site visitors. The test was turned on for about 5 days (more than enough time to collect visitor and conversion data).
Here’s a sample of the report that Website Optimizer provides:
As you can see from the graph above, the SSL Trust Test we ran performed better than not showing our Thawte SSL Trust Seal on the site. We were easily able to determine (via Google’s Website Optimizer) that the SSL Trust Seal on our home page was able to help improve our conversion goals (to the tune of a double digit improvement).
In a day where everyone has a design opinion, it might be time for you to start looking at Google’s Website Optimizer to eliminate the guesswork from your site design.
It will help and you’ll know really quick what works and what doesn’t. For a full story on how Extra Space (national storage company) used Website Optimizer, take a look at this video.
Good luck with your A/B testing to improve your site conversions and eliminate the guesswork from your website design! Be sure to comment on this post about how the Website Optimizer tool from Google helps your site…
Cheers, Matthew
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
CJ Boguszewski
Posted at 06:52h, 06 NovemberMatthew:
Many thanks for an informative blog.
However, I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?
Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?
Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I feel like Google Website Optimizer offers users the chance to “do something” — but “doing something” is not always the same as “doing the right thing.” Caveat emptor (yes, I know it's free, so not technically “buyer”…).
Your views on my comments?
CJ
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
matthewswanson
Posted at 12:37h, 06 NovemberThanks for the comments CJ…
Re:” I remain a little bit confused – is your premise that A/B testing eliminates guesswork? What if neither “A” not “B” is optimal?”
I'd say that if neither A nor B is optimal, there are other design elements that you need to look at tweaking. Some things might just be trivial and not have any effect on your visitors' behavior.
Re: “Certainly you could get lucky and “A” or “B” might be, but what about the many other variations on the page that might lead to an even greater predisposition for site visitors to convert?”
I'd say this would be a case where you need to use the multivariate testing. My example was a simplistic approach using just a couple items on the page, etc.
re: Plus, it's my understanding that Google's Website Optimizer eats up a lot of traffic to conduct anything more than an A/B test during its month-long (or more) data gathering phase. Then you have to analyze, pick the best combination, deploy, and hope that it doesn't change again — highly unlikely in a constantly-shifting setting like the web. Would you invest your retirement funds based on data from mutual funds' data from the 1980s? Didn't think so.
I'd say that you are definitely right – waiting for 1 month on anything is way to long to be collecting data to make any significant decisions. Depending on your site's traffic levels, you might be able to make a decision in just a few hours possibly. I guess it all depends on how hands on the site owner is to the business. Do we deploy code everyday? Yes, we do. Do we analyze trends and make changes weekly? Yes.
We follow lean development in our environment. If you don't know about lean, then I'd take a quick read of the book by Tom and Mary P. – Lean Development – it will change your approach to software if you've not ready it already. I wrote an article back in may about being the fat one in your company – you might want to take a read as it summarizes some points of lean development.
lastly, you're right – Website is Optimizer is indeed free. But not being free has a cost. either a development cost or a monetary cost. If you want to drop some coin, then I am sure there are some great paid tools you can use to do testing to see what works best for your users. If you want to develop these types of tools yourself, you'll spend weeks if not months to get something close to what Google offers for free.
While not perfect, the website optimizer, imo, is a great resource to leverage to help make some decisions on how to improve your users' experience on your site 🙂
Hope that answers your questions, as always, my responses are jmho – thanks so much for the feedback CJ! 🙂
Anyone else using the website optimizer with feedback? We'd love to hear your experiences…
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 Novembergood article thanks matthew. we've found user tesing to be important – like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your is right – I've been proved wrong on many an occasion when I say 'no i definately prefer design option A' I then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable…
J
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 NovemberA good article thanks Matthew. We've found user tesing to be important; like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your own is right – I've been proved wrong on a few occasions when I've said 'no I definately prefer design option A' and then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable… This especially applies if you're not within your own target market/ audience!
J
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 NovemberA good article thanks Matthew. We've found user tesing to be important; like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your own is right – I've been proved wrong on a few occasions when I've said 'no I definately prefer design option A' and then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable… This especially applies if you're not within your own target market/ audience!
J
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 NovemberA good article thanks Matthew. We've found user tesing to be important; like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your own is right – I've been proved wrong on a few occasions when I've said 'no I definately prefer design option A' and then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable… This especially applies if you're not within your own target market/ audience!
J
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 NovemberA good article thanks Matthew. We've found user tesing to be important; like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your own is right – I've been proved wrong on a few occasions when I've said 'no I definately prefer design option A' and then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable… This especially applies if you're not within your own target market/ audience!
J
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 NovemberA good article thanks Matthew. We've found user tesing to be important; like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your own is right – I've been proved wrong on a few occasions when I've said 'no I definately prefer design option A' and then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable… This especially applies if you're not within your own target market/ audience!
J
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 NovemberA good article thanks Matthew. We've found user tesing to be important; like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your own is right – I've been proved wrong on a few occasions when I've said 'no I definately prefer design option A' and then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable… This especially applies if you're not within your own target market/ audience!
J
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 NovemberA good article thanks Matthew. We've found user tesing to be important; like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your own is right – I've been proved wrong on a few occasions when I've said 'no I definately prefer design option A' and then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable… This especially applies if you're not within your own target market/ audience!
J
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 NovemberA good article thanks Matthew. We've found user tesing to be important; like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your own is right – I've been proved wrong on a few occasions when I've said 'no I definately prefer design option A' and then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable… This especially applies if you're not within your own target market/ audience!
J
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 NovemberA good article thanks Matthew. We've found user tesing to be important; like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your own is right – I've been proved wrong on a few occasions when I've said 'no I definately prefer design option A' and then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable… This especially applies if you're not within your own target market/ audience!
J
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 NovemberA good article thanks Matthew. We've found user tesing to be important; like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your own is right – I've been proved wrong on a few occasions when I've said 'no I definately prefer design option A' and then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable… This especially applies if you're not within your own target market/ audience!
J
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 NovemberA good article thanks Matthew. We've found user tesing to be important; like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your own is right – I've been proved wrong on a few occasions when I've said 'no I definately prefer design option A' and then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable… This especially applies if you're not within your own target market/ audience!
J
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 NovemberA good article thanks Matthew. We've found user tesing to be important; like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your own is right – I've been proved wrong on a few occasions when I've said 'no I definately prefer design option A' and then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable… This especially applies if you're not within your own target market/ audience!
J
TBPL
Posted at 04:45h, 07 NovemberA good article thanks Matthew. We've found user tesing to be important; like you say everyone has an opinion and it's easy to think your own is right – I've been proved wrong on a few occasions when I've said 'no I definately prefer design option A' and then take it around a sample of users and 8/10 prefer B or find B more intuitively navigable… This especially applies if you're not within your own target market/ audience!
J
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
cheri riley
Posted at 15:40h, 09 NovemberMatt,
Do people give you any grief about your sideways headshot gravatar? Some folks I know tease me about mine but I'm kind of partial to it even though it failed the A/B test…
Seriously, good thoughts on the optimizer I haven't tried it yet…but will now..
Web Design Lexington
Posted at 14:10h, 10 NovemberThis is a great resource for techies like me. And to use this free platform from google which specifically is for advertisers really helps in getting good sales conversion. Just use it wisely though.
atlantarealestate
Posted at 12:54h, 14 NovemberThis is pretty cool and don't know HOW I missed it, since I'm a big AdWords and Analytics user. Duh!
However, I've got way too many things on the list at the moment to divert to this, so I'm going to file it way back there and try to act like I never knew about it.
Thanks!
geschenkefrmnner
Posted at 22:27h, 29 DecemberHi,
Very informative post.The most obvious benefit of Google Website Optimizer is its ability to provide accurate data on how to improve your web pages, ultimately improving your conversion rate.
Grüner Tee