From A to B

People are finding websites more and more manipulative. And we don't mean this word lightly.

Why is this the case? In large part, it's because of the shitty tactics people are using on sites. But really, it's because websites care far more about short term sales and metrics instead of focusing on LTV. And that leads to hacks, not long term gains.

Made With Intent released a REALLY great report which went into detail on this, and I ...

We back out here with the amazing Emma Travis to dig into 'quality vs. quantity' when it comes to experimentation programs. The conversation Ben Labay keeps trying to force, but a bit more nuance to it.

There is a time and place for quality. But there is a time and place for velocity and scaling your program up in terms of number of tests run. How do you know when to do it? And what are triggers to get you .... ahem.......

How many of you have seen a website teardown and thought “Dude you literally have 0 data, this is just a vibes analysis?”

I have that thought regularly. And it got me thinking about heuristic audits as a whole, and trying to understand what makes a good heuristic audit good, and a bad heuristic audit bad. I enlisted the help of my mortal enemy Rishi Rawat to explore this. 

Vibes were immaculate, and he actually said some smart things...

Problematic stakeholders could be convinced if they... just got data. Right?

Nope. Sometimes it's deeper than that. You gotta understand what makes them tick. Is it data? Is it optics? Maybe you should be running heuristic audits on your stakeholders instead of your website...

In the second time EVER, someone else has changed my mind on something. Leave it to "Kingpin" Finn McKenty, who's apparently gone fr...

Do you REALLY know what cookies are? Like really, REALLY know? What about GDPR? What about PII?

I know the words. But what do they REALLY mean? I enlisted the help of Eddie "The Techie" Aguilar to help me simplify some of these complex topics, and help me create meaningful next steps on how to address PII concerns and other marketing-related issues in data collection.

We got into:

- Simplified definitions of coo...

It happens rarely, but somehow Linda was able to change Shiva's mind this podcast. And we got it ON THE RECORD.

What did she change his mind on? Linda "The Winna" Bustos brought some compelling conversation to the fact that company CAN differentiate in 'cookie cutter' websites (e.g. Shopify) in really, really creative ways.

We got into:

- The importance of copy when you're using a generic 'cookie ...

Do product/CRO people REALLY know well? There may be some Dunning Kruger happening, and maybe we really don't get why they keep complaining about our initiatives.

Spoiler: Many times, they have a VERY legitimate point!

Who better than the freaking VP of Nielsen Norman Group "Checkmate" Kate Moran to come dish all the things we're getting wrong about UX, and how to better work together.

We got into:

- ...

How many of y'all feel a bit nervous about going to in-person conferences / networking events? André Morys and I have been there before. Would you believe that "Sensei" André is actually an introvert?! Could've fooled me 👀

I wanted to get feedback from someone who RUNS conferences to figure out what tips and tricks we can utilize to get the most out of in-person events, ESPECIALLY coming from two people who ar...

What REALLY is the impact of leadership in growing an experimentation? And is "stable leadership" something which may actually be messing up your ability to grow your program?

This was something I wanted to enlist the thoughts from the "Taco King" himself, Lukas Vermeer. We went into some great thoughts and conversations around building trust, being perceived as a credible person to help you grow your experim...

"Running a Solo CRO program is easy"

- No one ever, in the history of the world

Erika Sentz (nicknamed "pancakes" for a very good reason...) and Shiva Manjunath have seen their fair share of Solo CRO programs, and wanted to go into tangible tips and tricks you can take away to action TODAY to help you have less stress and get more done as the only person managing that program.

We got into:

- The importanc...

Do people have legitimate pushback to A/B testing? I mean, some don't. They just hate being proven wrong. But there are others who DO have legitimate pushback. How do we address this?

Ton "The Don" Wesseling offered a ton of helpful thoughts on how we could actually push back on "logical" (but incorrect) reasons why people don't want to A/B test.

We got into:

- Pushing back on "not all tests w...

Pretty simple to make a hypothesis, right? If/Then statement, and boom, done. I already did most of the hard work in just having the framework.

Not quite.

A lot of work (and pre-work) SHOULD go into making a hypothesis, so that it can go from a "meh" but functional hypothesis, to a hypothesis that not only drives results, but trust in your experimentation program too! And bonus: Juliana "Run the Jewels" Jackson of...

Why are we wasting spaghetti? It's delicious! We shouldn't be throwing it at the wall...

Well Ryan "Big Brain" Lucht definitely is a big time lover of playing with food. And he makes a compelling argument for spaghetti testing, which delved into conversations into prioritization frameworks, should we TRY to "test everything," and other topics.

We got into:

-Spaghetti testing (Should you do it? Or na...

What does it ACTUALLY mean to be "data driven", and are #CROs adequately data driven? Should we be MORE data driven? Are there some opportunities for us to actually leverage intuition more? Will Shiva keep asking Bhavik "The Sick" loaded questions?

Short answer? Yes. Bhavik "The Sick" Patel and Shiva Manjunath discuss this pretty interesting topic, which may seem controversial, but there is actually...

If you squint your eyes really hard, there is something to the fact that CROs are simply Product Managers in "stats" clothing.... right? What ARE the actual differences between Product Managers and CROs? And how can CROs leverage these differences? Or how can CROs work more efficiently with Product teams?

I enlisted the help of Matt and Moshe (M&M), the experts in Product Management, to explore more of this (in add...

CROs are infallible. We believe data! We trust science over opinions! We are LITERALLY never wrong, right?

Well, sometimes we may be right, but we can still be rude about it. 🫣 And no one wants to work with that one guy who, while they may be right, has to let everyone know how right they are EVERY. DAMN. TIME.

I enlisted the help of Michael Aagaard, nicknamed "Shrek" (for very good reasons...) to explore how it i...

Are you doing 'strategic #CRO' ? What the hell even is strategic CRO? And how do you get there? Well, Talia Wolf had a post previously that triggered this discussion, so I had her on to better flesh out this idea. If you want to learn how to get from tactical to strategic experimentation, this is a can't miss episode.

Plus - we went into some spicy convo about website carousels.....

We got into:

- What rituals defi...

In many ways, CRO and UX have overlap. But how different are they? And how does UX view CRO? We enlisted the help of Victoria Sakal to go deep into this conversation to understand this from a UXer's perspective. Victoria 'The Warrior' Sakal shared some VERY interesting perspectives which can help CROs and UX collaborate more deeply, among other golden nuggets of information....

We got into:

- How UXers view CROs (rightly,...

Your tests keep on getting blocked. You're frustrated, shaking your fist at the screen, calling everyone a doo-doo head. We've all been there. It sucks. But on the heels of Gertrud Vahtra giving a talk at Experiment Nation on how to help getting alignment on testing by running workshops, I HAD to have her on the podcast to go deeper into this topic.

We got into: - Are your test approval rates too high? Too low? What does that mea...