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July 12, 2008 by david

A/B Testing - Strawberries or Cherries?

An A/B tested pancake

Here at Pod1 we are very passionate about things and this goes as well for such dry things as A/B testing. Everyone talks about it but what is it and how can you do it?

With A/B testing you take the HiPPO (Highest Paid Person in the Organisation) out of the equation. HiPPOs are usually the ones who say things like: I like this so you have to do it.
A/B testing puts figures behind guesswork and these usually impresses the HiPPO.

A/B testing as well means that you will produce a loosing version and this might lead to lower conversion (if you test conversion). But that is the whole point, as you want to find the winner.

As you may see I can get quite passionate about these things and I tend to take this home with me. This can lead to my Girlfriend being quite upset because after the theatre when she has to listen to me ranting about the Train Ticket machine and its poor usability. I bet Southern Trains has such a high AOV because their interface is so bad.

So in order to make up for that I decided to do, you can guess it, some A/B testing at home. What at home? Yes.

To make up for me always talking about Usability and User experience I decided to make a Pancake for Breakfast for her following the classic test setup.

1. Define a need
Girlfriend hungry.

Good that done we need to define our target audience.

2. Define Target audience:
Just Girlfriend is like “ABC 25-35 with lots of spare cash” (yours in this case), too generic. We need to define the persona: She really likes warm breakfast but also Yoghurt with Fruit, but she doesn’t like muesli very much. Often people only look at the first most obvious definition (ABC 25-35 likes warm breakfast) if they dive into the whole persona development thing, but there is a danger here:
If you serve her a Fry Up (warm breakfast), you probably haven’t understood your target audience very well as the result is likely that she moves back to her Mom.

3. Define success:
The pancake is the base of all and won’t change, it’s like the outer frame of your website unless you test the outer frame of your website. You have to plan what the filling for the pancake will be and make an educated guess about which one will win. This way you define the goals of this test and you can measure the results against it. Careful here, there are many micro actions that look like success (she making noises of appreciation like MMMMM, Yam etc,) but at the end you want the plate to be empty or a 1-2-1 in a very private area of the house. You define the goals so aim high but not too high.

4. Run the test:
Make the pancake and serve it straight from the pan no filling; with this please. Now you need to wait and see how the pancake is perceived. We need to establish a control result to test our variations against. Note down the feedback she gives. If she runs straight to the Jam/Nutella/Sugar Jar, you have done some usability testing at the time. That’s the great thing about testing you do many things at the same time which saves time and money.

After this we set up the test variations. My Girlfriend likes Strawberries and Cherries so I decided to use these. The test took a while to complete but I think I have found the winning combination. But you need to be careful with the initial results.

You will get some feedback very quickly (Yam or Yak) but wait until she is finished. If she doesn’t finish the pancake then even if she said it tastes nice initially, you have done something wrong and you need to test a different combination. Careful with trying to do it with too much fruit (think rich media). Results are initially very encouraging but if you get this wrong the result is a lot of soggy pancake on plate.

As with all good things you need to keep testing (I’m doing that now for about half a year). Sometimes you will get it wrong (Strawberries + Yoghurt and no sugar) and sometimes you will get it right but always keep testing.

Once you are done testing the pancakes you can test the next thing, I’m currently working on Brioche, freshly made.

Pancake with Yoghurt and Cherries

10-15 fresh Cherries
1 tbs granulated sugar
Shot glass of water

75g plain flour
50 ml full fat milk
1g baking powder
1 Egg

3 tbs Greek Yoghurt

Pit the cherries and place in a very small saucepan. Sprinkle with the sugar and put aside for 10 minutes. Place the saucepan on the hob and heat very gently. After 5 minutes add the water and keep on low heat for a little while. The aim is to concentrate the cherry flavour.
While the cherries reduce, mix the flour with the baking powder and add milk and the egg. Use a whisk to make a smooth not too runny pancake dough.

Place the butter in a frying pan and fry the pancake from both sides until golden brown.

Take it out of the pan and place the Yoghurt in a line across the centre, top with the Cherries and flap over in the middle. Serve immediately.

Variations:
Strawberries with a bit of Cognac
Strawberries raw but with Honey on the pancake
Banana with Honey and cinnamon

Multivariate option:
Cherries and strawberries combined
Fry 1 pancake the day before, then cut it in small stripes and fry again with lots of sugar in the pan (Caramelise it basically). Use this as a crunchy topping on the Fruit/Yoghurt variant.

June 17, 2008 by AS

Instore retailing and what it teaches us about selling online….

Great post from eConsultancy:

”

I recently attended an event in Amsterdam which gathered together senior etailers from across Europe (kindly sponsored by Fredhopper – I owe them at least that plug…).

For me the most fascinating talk was by the VP Merchandising & Buying at a major European multi-channel retailer. It reminded me just how much we still have to learn about how online selling works, and how much we can apply from offline.

The focus of the talk was about (offline / in-store) Category Management.

Now this a BIG topic. There is even a “Category Management Association” focused on “Advancing professional standards in category management”. Within category management you have all sorts of sub-areas e.g.:

- Category Definition
- Category Role
- Category Scorecards
- Format Management
- Assortment Breadth & Depth
- Customer Decision Trees…

We were talked through this supermarket’s key categories: “Destination”, “Traffic”, “Routine Volume”, “Routine Assortment”, “Impulse”.”

Read more

April 9, 2008 by AS

Great trends reports

If you have missed these, they are well worth a look.

Great inspiration and in an insight into consumer behaviour.

www.trendwatching.com/trends/statusstories.htm

March 20, 2008 by JP

Search within a search within a search

Recently I was searching for certain big brands on Google and I started finding a new feature in the results, which Google has quietly slipped in there. It’s a search box that site beneath the site links in some brand name searches. I first saw it on results for Virgin Holidays (One of Pod1’s favourite clients), but there seem to be a few other sites, such as Audi which also have this box.

 

The search box apparently allows you to search the site without needing to go to it first. This saved a fair bit of time, especially with graphics heavy sites that take forever to load. I managed to get to the page I wanted in about half the usual amount of time.

The first question I heard when I asked other people about it was ‘How do I get that for my site?’ The answer, of course, was ‘I don’t know,’ a very common problem when it comes to Google and natural search. The inevitable next question is ‘ Will it affect natural search rankings?’, however I don’t think this will be the case.

As far as I can see the main factor in whether a site is ‘blessed’ with one of these boxes seems to be the amount of searches that take place on a site. Unfortunately, this is not a good reflection on site structure and navigation. While I wish all my clients had a search box like Virgin Holidays, I can help feeling proud that visitors don’t have to use the search box to find the page they want.

As the search box becomes as standard as site links have become now, the benefits and drawbacks of it will become more apparent. For the moment though it’s just something cool to play with, a sign that Google is still trying to be innovative on some level.

March 13, 2008 by MB

London SES 2008 – Everything you ever wanted to know about search but were too afraid to ask.

As a complete newbie to the SES events I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect but I was hoping this would be an informative day out. I guess I was looking for a combination of some ‘top tips’ and some ‘myth busting’.

Let just say I wasn’t disappointed. I’ve read a few other posts about the event, some more positive than others, and if you were expecting a trade show and exhibition you’d be disappointed but if you were looking for a top notch informative seminar then this would be right up your street.

I started the day with the keynote presentation “The Changing Search World”, which was as good a place to start a day of SEOism as any.

The first problem arose trying to decide which of the presentations to attend, so after much deliberation I chose the following sessions;

News Search & SEO - This was a very useful session for me and I picked up lots of tips as well as reinforcing what I already new with good presentations from Greg Jarboe, Lee Odden and Tim Gibbon.

Blog & Feed Search SEO - This wasn’t quite as relevant for my clients but triggered a couple of good ideas we can use like a Widget for e-shop clients that notifies users of the item of the day, new stock & sales items.

Podcasts & Video SEO - Some interesting stuff here like Google only indexes videos if they have been posted on sites like You Tube, Metacafe etc. letting user do the hard work for them by applying the tags & descriptions.

Balancing Organic & Paid Listings - Paid V’s Natural Search, the age old question PPC or SEO (well not that old as neither have been around for long). The answer DO BOTH;-)

Linking Strategies – This was tricky how do you turn down the opportunity to listen and hopefully learn from some of the industries big dogs but it did clash with the new kid on the block Social Search Overview. In the end the allure of the perfect linking strategy won me over, and on reflection it was the right choice as the nice people at SES have put all the presentations online (including all the ones I missed) http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/london/presentations.html.

So in summary a great day out informative and well worth a look, I’ll definitely be there again next year.

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