Author: Chris Neumann

I love it when there’s wisdom in advertising. Take those old Head & Shoulders commercials about how “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” The idea behind these ads was that positive (and dandruff-free) encounters with new people could pave the way for great relationships moving forward.

It’s a concept that translates into the business world pretty well.

The business of insulated beverage containers is booming. If you are not drinking out of one while reading this post, you likely have one in your car or your backpack. The industry has grown significantly in the past 10 years, yet there's a huge opportunity for retailers to better optimize their sites for ecommerce without compromising their brand’s current lifestyle focus.

Kids love carousels. The circling painted ponies are fine childhood entertainment. But adding a carousel to your website is a serious mistake that will cost you customers and revenue.

Earnest is building a better bank that democratizes access to high-quality financial services. With a cross-functional focus on the customer experience, and applied rigor around their experimentation program, Earnest was able to realize significant gains in their mobile conversion and funnel completion rates.

Everyone who’s ever been through a complete site redesign knows they are, at best, frustrating and difficult processes. With seemingly endless meetings, constant efforts to please all the stakeholders, and the need to juggle schedules with your designer and your IT department, the efforts generally take far more time than they are worth.

Partnering with a top-rated Optimizely solutions partner is invaluable to your testing and development process for several key reasons. You might think that you'll be able to use the software's visual editor to set up your experiments, or that you'll give your engineers access to Optimizely and they'll code experiments for you. Both of these are viable options—up to a point.

If you want want to grow your company through data-driven experimentation, you now have a more diverse set of tools to use. Optimizely Full Stack brings the ability to create and run experiments and implement learnings anywhere in your technology stack, leveraging the Optimizely interface, stats engine and developer ecosystem.

There’s no disputing that A/B testing can be a fruitful way for companies to determine which design and language leads customers act. But after a recent study we conducted about test complexity, we learned something surprising: Complex tests are no more or less likely to win than easy ones.

One of the cornerstones at CROmetrics is rapid iteration. We work hard to get our clients quality results as quickly as possible. In this process, as with any venture, there are always challenges and roadblocks to be understood and resolved. As a designer, it pains me to admit that a consistent roadblock we've encountered is pushback from designers.

So you want to start A/B testing your site. OK, great! But where do you begin?

Most experts (including us) will advise you to look to best practices and go after “low-hanging fruit” first. That's great advice, but you'll soon find out that some best practices are ... better than others. And, not all low-hanging fruit is worth picking.