Comments on: Don’t Dismiss the Base Hits

By: Domas

Domas — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:07:16 +0000

Great post..I understand it well although I`m not to close with baseball.. I˙m from Europe.

By: greg

greg — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:24:49 +0000

I agree, I think secondary metrics are key, plus we usually online focus on online conversions, but a reduction in bounce rate can have a lift at the call center or local store – it’s all about the business results, not just thank you page views

Keep the baseball analogies coming!

By: Rummikub

Rummikub — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:40:28 +0000

Great addition Paul. I usually monitor Bounce rates for each page but I really need to A/B test al lot more on each page to increase conversions.

By: Paul Willard

Paul Willard — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 17:04:12 +0000

I would add segmentation to the list of things to measure. Just because your overall conversion rate did not change does not mean that conversion in some segments did not go way up or down. If you use segments that your web server is aware of, you can show different behavior on your site to different visitors and optimize conversion for each little segment. Examples of things your web server can be aware of include:
Referal source – the url email link vs search vs display vs the red banner vs the green banner, etc
behavior on your site – visitors that looked at digital cameras, people that registered for your newsletter, folks that have previously visited, previously purchased, etc

By: Brendan

Brendan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:04:29 +0000

Ben: Can’t control my favorites, but maybe I should’ve used Ty Cobb?

JoshBaker: Great comment, we too reserve a part of reports for learnings, particularly “ideas for follow-up tests.”

By: JoshBaker

JoshBaker — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:21:51 +0000

Great points! You’re a glass is half-full type of guy!

One of the things I like to do in my after test summary documents are not only to report on how the test performed against my test question/goal, but document what additional information was learned from the test that some may consider secondary or third to the desired test. In many instances, I have been able to take commonalities that I see in the 3 areas you mentioned (both successes and failures) and compare to past tests on the same or similar pages and see if there is any pattern, sometimes this helps provide some input for designing our next round of testing – maybe just maybe we were testing the wrong thing initially (by wrong I mean maybe the opportunity was not at were we initially thought our data pointed us to, but in a secondary “position”), and may can help us uncover where the true “home run” opportunity may really be at.

By: Ben

Ben — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:09:10 +0000

I was with you until the last sentence. Ted Williams hit 521 career home runs. That’s not too shabby…