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Optimizely brings A/B testing into the mainstream

As I've mentioned before, one of the keys to success in an increasingly competitive world is having the right data - and lots of it (see More data usually beats better algorithms). Businesses (and politicians) are increasingly looking beyond traditional research (with all its pitfalls) to real behaviour. And as more and more customer interactions move online, the possibilities for collecting real behavioural data are expanding rapidly.

One method of collecting real behavioural data is "A/B testing". Simply put, A/B testing works as follows:

  1. creating multiple versions or variations of pages on your web site with subtle differences in design or messaging,
  2. serve the multiple versions concurrently to different users at random for period of time, (typically, in a mature site, only a statistically significant percentage of users would see the variations under consideration with the vast majority still seeing the tried and tested pages)
  3. track the results in terms of which versions or variations produce higher levels of the desired behaviour,
  4. discard the versions that provide lower levels of desired behaviour and keep the versions or variations that provide higher levels,
  5. and finally, repeat the process as often as you like (apparently Google ran some 7,000. A/B tests in 2011).

The variations could be simple design changes: are users more likely to click on a button when it is red or when it is green? Does increasing the size of the button,or bolding a key word increase the number of clicks? However, more substantial variations are possible, ranging from different copy to different combinations of products and features.

Although the origins of A/B testing can be traced back to Google as far back as 2000, it really only began to capture people's imagination when US President Obama began to use it in his 2008 election campaign.

Unfortunately, A/B testing has historically been difficult to implement. That is, until Dan Siroker, the ex-Googler who introduced Obama's campaign team to A/B testing, teamed up with another ex-Googler, Pete Koomen, to launch Optimizely. With it's intuitive graphical user interface, Optimizely allows non-technical users to develop A/B testing campaigns.

As A/B testing goes mainstream, I am sure we can expect more tools in the market. One things is for sure:- the world of online marketing and web development has changed significantly and forever.

Your brain could be your password

One of the obstacles to online engagement is the number of passwords your customers have to remember.

Using popular sites such as Facebook or Google to provide authentication services is one way to avoid forcing your users to create yet another login and password. However, science is looking for even better solutions: this video from Mashable describes a number of alternatives, the most notable being the use of the unique patterns of brain waves each of us has.



This has obvious advantages over fingerprint and retina scanning, as I am sure we've all seen films where the villains remove someone's finger or eyeball to gain access!

How to build executive alignment around strategic change

If you're struggling to get your strategic initiatives out of the starting blocks, it may be because your executive decision makers are not aligned around the strategic imperative(s) for change. If they're not conscious of what the real problem is, their underlying discomfort may cause them to pick holes in your strategic initiatives' business cases and plans instead. You'll know that this is happening when no amount of addressing their concerns by further research or additional planning satisfies their concerns about your initiatives - they just keep picking on new perceived problems.

When that happens, it is time to take a step back and:
  1. Highlight the similarities and explore the differences in their understandings of the strategic imperative(s) for change.
  2. Evaluate, prioritise and/or otherwise adjust the strategic initiatives on the basis of the understanding achieved in step 1.
Step 1

You can identify the similarities and differences in understanding of the strategic imperative(s) using a simple matrix. You can do this conceptually, or by actually drawing a matrix that looks like this:

Stakeholder 1
Stakeholder 2
Stakeholder 3
Stakeholder 4
etc.
Strategic imperative 1
Strategic imperative 2
Strategic imperative 3
etc.

You can do this exercise by interviewing all of your executive stakeholders individually, or by getting them all together and doing it as a workshop, depending on the team culture and how well it works together. It is important to try to put real colour to your strategic imperative(s) avoiding generic but unhelpful imperatives like "growth" or "cost-cutting" and getting into details such as "what kind of growth?", "how?", "where?" and especially "why?".

Once you've identified the differences in understanding of the strategic imperative(s) for change you can start to explore them. Some differences are knowable. That is, they are differences of 'fact', and once the true facts are established the differences of opinion go away (assuming it is done in a way which build consensus, rather than in a way which just 'scores points'). Knowable differences usually lead to further research to establish the facts.

Other differences are unknowable. These are typically opinions about things that have not yet happened and can't be accurately predicted. Where you encounter these, it is useful to construct scenarios which increase the level of understanding of what the possible outcomes might be, to build strategies which are robust across multiple outcomes, and to put systems in place to monitor or even influence the situation as it unfolds.

Step 2

Once you've achieved some measure of alignment, you can re-evaluate, prioritise and otherwise adjust your strategic initiatives. Again, a simple matrix may help, such as the one outlined below:

Initiative 1
Initiative 2
Initiative 3
Initiative 4
Initiative n
Strategic imperative 1
Strategic imperative 2
  • Scenario a
  • Scenario b
Strategic imperative 3
Strategic imperative ...
Financial attractiveness
(Organisational) ability to execute
Overall ranking

Note that in addition to the strategic imperatives and scenarios, you'd still also evaluate the initiatives against their financial attractiveness and the organisations ability to deliver them.

A simple High / Medium / Low ranking is probably enough for this purpose.

At this point if you've not yet achieved some measure of consensus around your strategic initiatives, you will have a pretty good idea of why not. At that juncture, you can turn the conversation around: if your stakeholders don't believe your initiatives will address the strategic imperative(s), then what kind of initiatives do they believe will? This turns the conversation for a negative criticism into a positive co-creation exercise.

What have been your experiences of building consensus around strategic initiatives? I'd love to hear about them in the comments below.

The Backing Up Song: The birth of an Internet meme

We had some friends around for lunch on the weekend, and as it was raining, we spent part of the afternoon watching YouTube. "Have you seen 'The Backing Up Song'?" asked my friend's teenage daughter. So we looked it up.

The Backing Up Song started with an interview on Kansas TV station KMBC in which a woman describes witnessing an attempted robbery at a Shell gas station. It is nothing remarkable in itself, but watch it anyway, just to understand how this meme develops.

This interview was subsequently mixed into a rather catchy little tune.

However, where it really gets interesting is when Walk Off The Earth then do a cover of the song.

At the time of writing this, the original interview had been watched 392 thousand times on YouTube, whilst the original remix song had been watched 435 thousand times. The Walk Off The Earth cover, on the other hand had been watched 3.4 million times. It is not hard to see (for what my musical opinion is worth) why the cover version is so much more popular. But what is interesting is that, if you watched it first, you would have no idea what it was about.

The Backing Up Song has grown from its humble beginnings as a KMBC local interest interview, into a fully fledged Internet meme.

"an idea, behavior or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures."
And an Internet meme more specifically as:
"a concept that spreads via the Internet. The term is a reference to the concept of memes, although the latter concept refers to a much broader category of cultural information."
For those of you not familiar with Walk Off The Earth, they are a Canadian indie band known for their innovative YouTube covers of contemporary songs. They rose to fame after their cover of the Gotye song Somebody That I Used to Know, in which all five members of the band simultaneously play the same guitar, became a YouTube hit (87 million views at the time of writing). I've included it below for good measure.

Internet memes have clear implications for marketing and advertising in the same way that viral marketing and business models do. However, Internet memes have the capability to break out of the confines of the original and take on an independent life of their own, just as The Backing Up Song has broken out of its origins in the KMBC interview, thereby reaching a wider audience. The challenge is to try and tie memes, and the attention they draw, back to the original message. Aleksandr Orlov, the debonair Russian meerkat oligarch, and his loyal and long-suffering IT director/sidekick, Sergei,  from the CompareTheMarket.com advertisements are good examples of where this has succeeded.

If you have any other examples you'd like to share, why not leave a note in the comments below?