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Is your company serious about experimentation?
If you want to be serious about experimentation and level up your competitiveness in the marketplace, you better do it well. It would be best if you assume your competitors are doing it well. You should feel more confident in what you can do to get started in experimentation or what you can do to level up your program that’s already running. Don’t feel it’s too hard or too easy. It’s usually somewhere in the middle.
In this playbook collaboration with VWO, we share a step-by-step approach to be a strategic, intentional winner.
Experimentation Rigor: The Secret Sauce
Rigor is what separates good experimentation programs from the great ones. It’s missing in so many businesses. It commonly falls second to speed…which is a mistake. Learn rigor fundamentals in this recent discussion I had with the amazing Morgan Legge from Convert.
Turn Research Insights Into Test Ideas
My recent collab with SiteSpect talks about one of my favorite topics: test ideation. It’s a sore spot for many teams. You’d be surprised at how many go off of gut feelings and “we think,” “we feel,” and “we believe” statements.
We think this image would be better in the homepage hero.
We feel like this copy will resonate better.
We believe this is a stronger value proposition.
Usually, team members are not in the target audience. So why would their opinions be applicable? Even if they were, what basis do you have to say one idea is better than another? Do you arm wrestle to choose what to do next?
This approach is far too subjective and always leads to poor results. That approach is not data-backed at all. It’s what practitioners call “spaghetti testing” – flinging stuff at the wall and hoping it sticks. If you find success, you’re usually just getting lucky. We don’t want lucky wins. We want strategic winning that’s predictable, scalable, and repeatable.
So let’s circle back to the term “data-backed.” Strategic winning starts there. The data we need comes from user research. What do I mean by “research?” Let’s dive into it.
