Understand – and Invest Behind – What Works
In these uncertain times, the value of experimentation in understanding change has become even more important. Resources, whether time or budget dollars, are scarce even in the best of times. During COVID, most businesses need to be highly conscious of how they allocate resources. Here too, experimentation is key. While teams often consider experimentation in the context of optimization – picking the option customers like best – A/B testing can also be put to use to quantify the impact of product, process and other changes that can otherwise be challenging to assess. When was the last time someone in your product organization told you, “we changed something, we think customers like it, but we don’t know how much sales have changed”? Or, “it was only a back-end change, customers won’t even see it!” With experimentation, the difference in conversion, sales or any other success metric can be measured between those receiving the new experience and those who receive the status quo. Armed with this information, your team can invest talent and budget behind ideas and experiences that work, and drop the ones that don’t.