How Your Business Can Use the Science That Helped Win the White House
The average conversion rate—the rate at which visitors convert into customers—across the web is only 2%. That means it's likely that 98% of visitors to your website won't end up converting into customers.
What's the solution? A/B testing.
A/B testing is the simple idea of showing several different versions of a web page to live traffic, and then measuring the effect each version has on visitors. Using A/B testing, companies can improve the effectiveness of their marketing and user experience and, in doing so, can sometimes double or triple their conversion rates. Testing has been fundamental in driving the success of Google, Amazon, Netflix, and other top tech companies. Even Barack Obama and Mitt Romney had dedicated teams A/B testing their campaign websites during the 2012 Presidential race.
In the past, marketing teams were unable to unleash the power of A/B testing because it required costly engineering and IT resources. Today, a new generation of technology that enables marketers to run A/B tests without depending on engineers is emerging and quickly becoming one of the most powerful tools for making data-driven decisions.
Authors Dan Siroker and Pete Koomen are cofounders of Optimizely, the leading A/B testing platform used by more than 5,000 organizations across the world. A/B Testing: The Most Powerful Way to Turn Clicks Into Customers offers best practices and lessons learned from more than 300,000 experiments run by Optimizely customers. You'll learn:
- What to test
- How to choose the testing solution that's right for your organization
- How to assemble an A/B testing dream team
- How to create personalized experiences for every visitor
- And much more
Marketers and web professionals will become obsolete if they don't embrace a data-driven approach to decision making. This book shows you how, no matter your technical expertise.
DAN SIROKER is the cofounder and CEO of Optimizely. The inspiration for Optimizely came from Dan's experience as the Director of Analytics for the 2008 Obama Presidential campaign. Optimizely is the product Dan wishes he had back then to make it easy for anybody to do A/B testing. In 2012, Forbes named Dan one of the Top 30 under 30 in Technology. Dan was formerly a product manager for Google Chrome and AdWords.
PETE KOOMEN is the cofounder and President of Optimizely. After earning his MS in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Pete joined Google as a product manager where he helped launch and grow Google App Engine to more than 150,000 developers. In 2009, Pete teamed up with Dan to start their first company, CarrotSticks, an online math game for kids. Less than a year later, Pete and Dan created Optimizely during the Y Combinator winter 2010 class. In between mountain climbing adventures, Pete runs product, engineering, and design at Optimizely.
Chapter 1 How A/B Testing Helped Win the White House—Twice 1
PART I LESSONS LEARNED FROM 200,000 A/B TESTS (AND COUNTING) 13
Chapter 2 What to Test 17
Chapter 3 Seek the Global Maximum 33
Chapter 4 Less Is More: Reduce Choices 47
Chapter 5 Words Matter: Focus on Your Call to Action 59
Chapter 6 Fail Fast and Learn 71
PART II IMPLEMENTING A/B TESTING: PLAY-BY-PLAY GUIDE 83
Chapter 7 Choose the Solution That's Right for Your Organization 87
Chapter 8 The Cure for the HiPPO Syndrome 99
Chapter 9 The A/B Testing Dream Team 109
Chapter 10 Iterate, Iterate, Iterate 119
PART III ADVANCED TOPICS IN A/B TESTING 131
Chapter 11 How A/B Tests Can Go Awry 135
Chapter 12 Beyond the Page: Non-Website A/B Testing 143
Chapter 13 Personalize, Personalize, Personalize 155
Conclusion 165
Appendix 1: 60 Things to A/B Test 167
Appendix 2: Metrics and the Statistics behind A/B Testing 179
Acknowledgments 195
Index 197
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