“Work it harder, make it better. Do it faster, makes us stronger. More than ever, hour after. Our work is never over.” If you think this quote sounds robotic, you’re half right. I am in fact quoting the infectious song from the robotic group, Daft Punk. But if you don’t think this applies to your business, or even yourself as a marketer, you might not be human after all. Stick with me for a bit, and maybe, you’ll get lucky and learn a thing or two about A/B Testing.
Optimizely does a fantastic job making A/B Testing sound so simple, you could explain it to grandma. Essentially, it’s a simple way to test changes you make to your page, and choose the more productive. Why does that matter? Because “measuring the impact that changes have on your metrics such as sign-ups, downloads, purchases, or whatever else your goals may be, you can ensure that every change produces positive results“. In other words, suppose you and your shithead partner can’t figure out what would be better on the website. You think a picture of a big, juicy burrito from Chipotle would be aesthetically the best choice for a header graphic on your website about Mexican food. But Dumbass over in the corner is arguing a floppy quesadilla from Qdoba is better. Well kiddies, let’s see what the people like better.
A/B Testing works by surveying the two pages, and the page that receives better traffic, leads, or whatever your goal might be, clearly proves there is a more popular response to the variation in the feedback from your beta testers. If you’re going to be selling to the customers, why not ask them how they want to be sold to? Naw mean?
And I’m sure there’s some of you that are wondering “well, why the hell do I care what A/B says? I’ll just go with the formula with whatever worked in the past.” And that would probably work in a world where nobody ever changes. Kinda like the Simpsons and Springfield. But because we aren’t sipping Duff and refusing to age like Maggie, we should probably evolve with our customers and trends.
There’s a mentality that there is a formula for success, and by repeating that formula, you will become successful as well. Well, the highest paid person’s opinion, HiPPO, doesn’t always know what’s best. After reading Practical Guide to Controlled Experiments on the Web: Listen to Your Customers not to the HiPPO, it can be summarized that “data trumps intuition”. Success really comes down to a matter of perception, in business; the customers’ is what matters the most, and a positive experience is what will create repeat business. So for people that tend to want to go with the cookie-cutter way of thinking, just know that you will be among the first to fail if you do not aspire to take a chance to be innovative.
“But Brian, we’ve already had the story of Apple jammed down our throats a million times.” Fair enough. I’ll show you how A/B Testing works on something that isn’t a commodity. In fact, I’ll make it about fundraising.
How much do you think was spent on campaign spending in 2012? How about just the two finalists; Obama and Romney? Oh, about a little over $1.7 billion. Yes, billion. B as in batshit outrageous. While most of us who don’t live under a rock know Romney is quite the business man himself, how the hell did Obama raise all those funds? Amelia Showalter. Don’t worry, I didn’t expect you to know that one, but now you get to be the fancy pants know-it-all at the next family gathering.
Amelia directed a team to conduct A/B testing for effective email drafts and subject lines. Did you receive an email? If you can remember, could you guess which of these subject lines it probably was?
- Hello <name>@gmail.com, Obama Wants You
- The President Needs Your Help
- Support Obama 2012
- I will be outspent
The correct answer is the one that you would probably see from a friend, the less professional and more honest/sentimental subject line. In fact, that stupid little subject line made a noticeable difference of $2.6 million. All because someone took the time to read the analytics and test alternatives. Even more to prove to my earlier point, all emails “had a shelf life”. And new ideas needed to be formed.
Have you ever fallen victim to this? Consider this;
You’re scrolling your news feed, and stop at a picture of Chris Brown and a crying Rihanna , with the caption “HE WAS STUPID ENOUGH TO DO IT AGAIN!” Dammit… I have to read this. How bad did he beat the shit out of her this time? And as soon as you get to the article, it turns out it’s just Chris showing off his platinum blonde hair. Misleading? That’s almost the point of clickbaiting, and tricking you into visiting a site’s landing page.
You’ve probably seen similar garbage on your Facebook ads. “TRAINERS HATE HIM, LEARN HIS SECRET” with a guy sporting a 300 Spartan 12-pack. It’s all to intrigue you, pull you in, and get you to learn more. Or even browsing YouTube and there’s a picture of Batman vs. Superman with the title “LEAKED TRAILER: VIEW NOW” and it turns out to be some fatass vlogging his conspiracy theories about the pictures posted on Facebook, and inserted his own thumbnail to deceive you.
So did Showalter do her job as misleading as this? Naw. But she did break free of the conventional email spamming, into a creative approach. She turned an opportunity into a science experiment.
In Bloomberg Businessweek, Showalter noted “We were so bad at predicting what would win that it only reinforced the need to constantly keep testing,” says Showalter. “Every time something really ugly won, it would shock me: giant-size fonts for links, plain-text links vs. pretty ‘Donate’ buttons. Eventually we got to thinking, ‘How could we make things even less attractive?’ That’s how we arrived at the ugly yellow highlighting on the sections we wanted to draw people’s eye to.”
techPresident followed up with the election team after the campaign ended. “The unsung heroes were all the team leaders and volunteers who were entering data nightly, and then strategizing with the data coming back from HQ.” For the college student that is typically disengaged from politics, you still probably saw Obama engaged in more unconventional channels to speak to people. Social media, Reddit AMA, interviews on The Daily Show… You would almost have to be Amish to not see SOMETHING during his campaign.
Well, nerds, analytics is being used every where. Rejoice for those of you that can read it. And it pairs nicely with A/B testing, almost as well as Prince Harry and whiskey. Coupled together, they create headline news for all to be seen.
So what’s the takeaway from this? Proof that reading your data and constantly improving will keep you more relevant with your target audience. And while you may potentially take a wrong turn every now and then, it’s because you can’t win ’em all. But always strive forward to give the people the best possible result you can.
So one more time (last Daft pun, I promise), the TL;DR of this blog is
- A/B Testing surveys which changes produce better results
- Moves from “we think” to “we know”
- Analytics fuels A/B Testing and gives reason to test alternatives
- If it can win a Presidential campaign, it can win a customer over
brianhaug 
Good job. Have you A/B tested, or do you plan to, with you marketing exploits at school? Additionally, there is a time and a place for everything. There is a time for one to scream “FUCK”, in fact it can be therapeutic, and there is a time to express yourself through tightly written prose. If you plan for this blog to be read by a potential employer, or suspect it will be found by one, what do you want them to take away form it. Swearing, in this context, is often seen by us adults in the real world as a sign of an unintelligent person who hasn’t the command of english to fully articulate their thoughts. Some may not see it this way, its your gamble.
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