DO Runs Test at Opticon, Gets Damn Good Results

Optimizely, our go-to partner for everything A/B testing, hosted their first annual customer conference in San Francisco last month. Opticon gave us a ton of attractive reasons to attend -- Our Director of Strategy & Planning, Eric Hanser, was nominated for Testing Hero of the Year, we were asked to be sponsors as well and we got to be in one of the greatest cities ever. Unfortunately, Eric didn’t win (although we still consider him to be our Testing Hero). Instead, our agency did! No, we didn't win an Optie, but we did get some damn good results from the custom test we ran at the conference.

In the test, we asked people to take a minute to answer a few questions based on actual tests we ran for one of our clients. Click here to test your knowledge on A/B optimization and check out the results for our test below:I know some of you are probably reading this and thinking, "I didn't get to take the test" - don't you worry, we are still running live data. So sit back and test your A/B knowledge here!

Of course, our test results weren’t the only thing we took from Opticon. Below are a couple of more takeaways that we’ve been trying to implement more often here in the office.

Test, test, test!

As Dan Siroker, CEO and co-founder of Optimizely, said during his keynote, “Just run an experiment.” Taking Google’s formula of utilizing data over the HIPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion) to make decisions couldn’t have resonated with us more. Today, there are just way too many tools, Optimizely just to name one, to not go with side with data to make efficient business decisions. The more you test, and the smaller you test, the more it will pay off.

Structure of Tests

When it comes to individual tests, we realized that whether or not your test passes or fails, you will still learn about your site visitors. Like with an experiment, simply start with a theory or hypothesis and expect to build knowledge after testing, regardless of the results.

For those unfamiliar with Optimizely, it is an intricate platform that conducts A/B testing, multipage/multivariate testing with targeting/segmentation all while using influential real-time data to meet the needs of businesses looking to deliver unique web experiences to their visitors. More than 6,000 companies have adopted the Optimizely CRO software, including Starbucks, Disney, Salesforce and of course, Digital Operative.