

Optimizely (YC W10) helps raise $1.02 million for Haiti Relief with A/B testing - dsiroker
http://whichtestwon.com/archives/5690

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marknutter
Too bad that money will probably be mishandled and squandered like most of the
donation funds have been so far.

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rarrrrrr
I recommend donating to some of the smaller, longer term investment
organizations tackling fundamental problems instead of trying to react to the
latest crisis.

I've been impressed with water.org's micro finance based approach. It also
helps that I know someone there and can still fully recommend them. :)

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dsiroker
If you want to go directly to the results page without voting, here is the
link: <http://whichtestwon.com/haiti-fund-nonprofit-test?pollid=86>

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trotsky
How appropriate do you think it is to run a split test for a charitable
campaign where the bulk of the donations will happen quickly and the
opportunity for longer term optimization is low? Did the fund approach you
because they were interested in a test or did you suggest it? How quickly did
they adopt the winning candidate as their only version?

The article notes "this one’s a bit of a no brainer" and four out of five
random people on the Internet predicted the optimized version. Given these
facts, it's hard not to interpret the results as having cost a substantial
amount of donation money by testing something the designer involved already
knew the answer to.

Perhaps you could elaborate on the benefits to Hatians or the non-profit of
running this test?

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dsiroker
The two variations compared in this experiment were the results of four
separate experiments which had eight variations each. This was the final
before & after test to see what the total impact was on the donation page.
Each individual experiment generated very surprising results that we then
incorporated into the final experiment.

 _Perhaps you could elaborate on the benefits to Hatians or the non-profit of
running this test?_

An incremental $1 million they wouldn't have had otherwise.

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trotsky
Thanks for explaining. By oversimplifying the process that article really
doesn't do you any favors.

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gxs
>Please note: They didn’t measure form submissions.

That's a shame - It'd be interesting to know tidbits such as, which form had
the highest donation per submission, etc.

