Ask HN: What's the most absurd A/B test result you've seen? - sAbakumoff
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Jemaclus
I don't know if I have a good answer for this specifically, but as a consumer,
I have a little rant. You know, Amazon must A/B test the shit out of their
homepage... but if I buy a shower curtain, my Amazon home page is nothing but
shower curtains for weeks. How many shower curtains do they think I need? This
works with other once-in-a-blue-moon items, too: plungers, watches, windshield
wipers, phone cases.

What they should do is say "Hey, this guy bought a shower curtain, which means
A) he has a bathroom, and B) either moved in or is redecorating... and that
means he probably wants a bath mat, a toothbrush holder, a plunger, a towel
rack..."

But nope... shower curtains for days. And you know that somehow this works out
great for Amazon, or else they'd change it.

~~~
bdevine
"Turns out the last shower curtain you bought from us isn't working out so
great, is it? Well, check out all these top-ranked shower curtains that your
search didn't return!"

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muzani
This article covers it well: [https://theawl.com/a-complete-taxonomy-of-
internet-chum-de0b...](https://theawl.com/a-complete-taxonomy-of-internet-
chum-de0b7a070a2d)

It's about the ads you usually find at the side and bottom of dodgy sites. An
exact quote from the site:

"Like everything else on the internet, traffic flowing through chumboxes must
be tracked in order for everyone to be paid. Each box in the grid’s
performance can be tracked both individually and in context of its neighbors.
This allows them to be highly optimized; some chum is clearly better than
others. As a byproduct of this optimization, an aesthetic has arisen. An
effective chumbox clearly plays on reflex and the subconscious. The chumbox
aesthetic broadcasts our most basic, libidinal, electrical desires back at us.
And gets us to click."

So you get all kinds of disgusting, disturbing and yet fascinating things that
entice you to click. Clicking the most disturbing thing encourages more
content like that.

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cm2012
I knew a background check website that tested two funnels. One gave the free
info instantly and then upsold to the paid plan, the other gave that same info
after an 11 minute B.S. process. The version that took an artificial 11
minutes led to literally 10x conversions to the paid info.

~~~
wingerlang
I think this makes sense. If they can get it instantly without pain there is
no incentive to upgrade. Having to wait is extremely annoying.

A dating website I used to use does something similar. It makes guys wait 10
minutes between each message while girls can send all they want. I can imagine
this works really well because even I considered purchasing it, and I never
purchase such stuff.

~~~
Jeremy1026
You find a nice lady?

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Gustomaximus
Mostly when significantly different pages make little to no difference on
conversion. This has made me a little jaded about sweating over the colour of
a button, or wording a statement type thing. Yes, a site needs good
architecture and design. But overall its other things than design
look/language that become the real needle movers for digital performance, but
people often focus here as its the fun stuff.

