Workshop: Click the Big Red Button : Tips & Techniques for Optimizing Conversion and A/B Testing”
Date: Monday, 4/16/2007
Presenter: Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist

Avinash’s talk was funny and enlightening. I got a good sense of how important it is to drive design decisions using empirical data rather than relying on intuitions or even well-established heuristics. I also have a new term in my lexicon: “HiPPO” (the Highest-Paid Person’s Opinion). Essentially, everyone has an opinion on design and assumes that they understand the user. In many organizations, the higher up on the pay scale one goes, the stronger that opinion gets. And if the opinion happens to be wrong, it gets more and more more difficult it is to correct.

This is not so much an issue at Instructables, where we have a tight-knit (and fairly horizontal) team of five, but it has been a huge issue at various companies I’ve worked for over the last ten years. Hard data rescues you from the perilous seas of subjectivity.

Avinesh also gave a good overview of the methods that one has at one’s disposal (A/B testing, Multivariate Testing, and Experience Testing.) These range from the simple and easy-to-implement to comprehensive strategies that allow companies to fully understand the impact of each design decision on the bottom line.

As usual, full notes are after the jump.

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Workshop: Marketing Analytics for Web 2.0
Date: Monday, 4/16/2007
Presenter: Brett Crosby, Senior Manager, Google

This is my second set of notes from O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 Expo. These are from a talk by Brett Crosby, Senior Manager with Google Analytics and a former exec at Urchin (Which Google acquired to develop its analytics product.)

This was an introductory talk on how Google Analytics (GA) is used in the Web 2.0 world. It was primarily an overview, explaining how and why GA was developed for Web1.0. It then shows how GA has had to adapt to the non-page-centric Web 2.0 world and how it can be used to track offline marketing efforts.

I also attended a more detailed talk about multivariate analysis, which will be online soon. Full notes on this talk are after the jump:

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