

Bringing A/B Testing To The Fortune 5 Million - mattyb
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/12/09/bringing-ab-testing-to-the-fortune-5-million/

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patio11
Clickable link to the startup I'm discussing in this blog post:
<http://www.visualwebsiteoptimizer.com>

For my full opinions, see the blog post. I think most HNers would be better
served by the best A/B testing library available for your platform of choice,
but if your Aunt Cindy runs a business with a website, then Visual Website
Optimizer will let her A/B test it without having to spend a few years in
learning to speak geek first.

~~~
brm
hmm I've seen that design somewhere before... Oh yeah: <http://basecamphq.com>
. At least they uploaded the background images to their own server and didn't
direct link them

~~~
patio11
I mentioned in my blog post:

 _I have to say one thing, though, and it is straight out of the Economic
History of Japan playbook: people don’t take copiers seriously, and it is a
hard impression to shake once you’ve gotten it attached to you, fairly or
otherwise. The design “inspired by” Basecamp is… ahem… well, suffice it to say
that it does not demonstrate nearly as much originality as the software does.
I’d hate for folks to write this startup off just for that, but first
impressions matter.

Rather than taking (deserved) lumps for flying the Jolly Roger, I’d suggest
folks to either use an open source web design, one of the attractive
reasonably priced templates the Internet is overflowing with, or hire somebody
with design skills to bang out something decent for v1.0._

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spking
The wholesale ripoff of the Basecamp UI is just unforgivable. I can't believe
they thought they'd get away with that.

~~~
Timothee
It does say "Design inspiration: Basecamp" at the bottom, but at this point,
is not called inspiration anymore. When you actually use the exact images used
in the original, it's definitely either "ripoff" or "theft".

~~~
josefresco
What images were re-used?

~~~
mattyb
<http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/images/texture.png>

<http://basecamphq.com/images/texture.png>

    
    
      $ cmp -l bc_texture.png vwo_texture.png
      $

