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Are your visitors telling you if you’re getting hotter or colder?
By Billy | November 13, 2008
In elementary school, I played the game Hot or Cold in class. The rules of the game are simple:
- One child is picked as the “searcher” and leaves the room
- The class collectively chooses an object in the room, like a marker or eraser, for the searcher to find
- Once the object is selected, the searcher returns to the room and has to find the mystery object as quickly as possible
To help the searcher out, the other kids in the room scream hot, if the searcher gets closer to the object, or cold, if they get farther.
To make the game more challenging, the searcher might be limited to only one clue, just hot or just cold. Kids that were told both hot and cold found the objects fairly quickly, but if they were only allowed one type of feedback, it took them much longer.
For the same reasons that it is hard to find the object in the game without being told where it is closer and farther from, in testing, if you don’t design your tests with two distinct variations, you might go wandering for a long time trying to find what exactly your customer wants.
My metaphor fails in one way though. In the game, the searcher does find the object eventually, even with just one type of hint. However, If you don’t design tests correctly though, you may never find a page that resonates strongly with the audience. You might test dozens of testimonials and find the most successful testimonial, but if you never test it against no testimonial or a review, you may be missing out on even bigger gains.
Let your audience tell you hot and cold by designing your tests intelligently and they’ll help you find the optimal page faster than ever.
Photo credit: Night Owl City CC
Topics: Methodology, Testing Techniques |
