From A to B

Are manipulation and bribery the keys to building a culture of experimentation?

No.

(Well, maybe)

Jenni "Broadway" Bruckman (Director of Digital Product at YETI) joined this week to help broad the topic of building "cultures" which foster data-driven thinking and experimentation. It's different than focusing on explicitly building a culture of experimentation, in that your goal is to basically buil...

A/B testing tools - all they do is randomize traffic. So why are we spending thousands of dollars for it?

Jonas "Elvis" Alves (of AB Smartly) joined the pod to discuss some of the major challenges in building A/B testing tools. It kinda started in a way I had no idea it would - that you're not buying a testing tool, but buying a... trust platform?

Jonas throws some shade at other testing tools, but I bleep it out,...

Is 'ethics' something we've undervaluing when it comes to experimentation? Should we actually care about this nerd stuff of 'ethics'?!

Well, yes. Obviously. AJ "Does No Wrong" Long joined Shiva to chat about this specifically, as someone who works in the fantasy sports realm of things, ethics can be a contentious subject.

We got into:

- Why "users first" is really the only way to foolproof ...

Emotion in data analysis, from what we've been told, should never happen. But the kicker - humans are humans. We use emotions in literally everything we do. So how do we channel it best to make sure we are positively impacting the business?

Gerda "The koala" Thomas joined Shiva to chat about this topic. Where does it make sense to channel emotion? In getting EXCITEMENT about testing, and ideas! But maybe we park it...

Don't know what the hell CRO and experimentation is? Trying to understand the basic concepts and process?

We gotchu. Rommil "The Thrill" Santiago and Shiva Manjunath went into all the common topics, and we can even help you explain this to others who might not fully understand what you do in CRO.

Please passive aggressively share this episode to people who don't understand CRO. I will fall on my sword for ...

Have you ever struggled to get buy in from senior leadership? Never in your entire life, right?

Well I've faced it. A lot. And I wanted to get in the mind of a super seasoned CMO to truly understand what makes them tick. What they care about. What they DON'T care about.

Who better than Kelly Hopping, CMO at Demandbase. And y'all, this one is CHOCK FULL of amazing insights from her to better understand how to comm...

Finding clients is hard enough - finding GOOD ones? Feels damn near impossible.

I enlisted the help of Tas Bober to help navigate this complex field of getting client work, and explored topics related to CRO/client work as well!

We got into:

- Bringing confidence to the client relationship (you don’t always have to cave in to EVERY little freaking thing they want you to do)

- Running from bad clients when they don’t pass the v...

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...