Thinking About Statistics
Written by Amy Gyoba on February 2, 2012
Statistics are everywhere, whether we’re talking about crime rates going down or high school graduation rates going up. It’s no different when it comes to websites, where we track metrics like page views, conversions, and bounce rates. Although we’d like to believe that we’re savvy about the numbers, we may not be as adept at interpreting them as we think. In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman explains why.
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A/B Testing: Seeing the Forest
Written by Amy Gyoba on January 16, 2012
Have you ever heard the saying “not seeing the forest for the trees”? It means that someone doesn’t see the forest (the big picture) because they’re too busy looking at the trees (the details). We experienced this problem while performing A/B testing and want to share our lessons learned. In this case, it took some time to figure out why we weren’t getting conclusive results—we had been focusing too much on the small details.
Defining A/B Testing
A/B or split testing is exactly what it sounds like: testing one version of an ad or webpage against another one to see how a change to one component affects the conversion rate. Conversion, the desired user action, is defined before testing. It’s a key part of split testing because it determines which version is more successful.
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Writing for Your Audience
Written by Amy Gyoba on November 1, 2011
So you know what you want to talk about, but how will you write it? One of the first things they teach you in technical writing is know your audience, and this applies to blogging or any other type of writing.
Before you compose your content, think about who will be reading it and what you want them to do with the information. Use this analysis to guide the tone, language, and strategy of your writing.
