

Ask HN: How do you use A/B testing? - yeti

After reading a lot of "Lessons Learned" blog, we're going to add split testing process to our games site to track and improve the registration rate (to start with)...<p>I'm curious what other startups are already using A/B testing for and where it helps most? (and not)
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patio11
I did ad hoc A/B testing for a while, switch to Google Website Optimizer, and
am going to get around to releasing a homegrown Rails A/B framework one of
these months...

You can A/B test the heck out of everything, but the best ROI on time for me
has been taking key interactions on the funnel and testing changes to them.
For me, the big ones are viewer of webpage to download of software, and view
purchasing page to completing sale.

Some of the changes are obviously going to have significant results (redoing
your shopping cart), some might be subtle (tweaking a button's color).

In general, I don't bother A/B testing things outside of the funnels. I'm sure
that given infinite time I could rewrite my copy on tertiary web pages to
decrease my bounce rate by a few points, but that does not move the needle for
my business. Rewriting my shopping cart did.

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yeti
thanks, that's helpful... yes we're thinking of exactly those two
points...registration funnel and purchase funnel to begin with.

