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What works in e-commerce – A meta-analysis of online experiments [pdf]

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Re: What works in e-commerce – A meta-analysis of online experiments [pdf]

#51

Post by TallGuyShort »

Iv wrote: post #25

tl;dr: The 3 items possibly statistically significant are: - Saying there are just a handful items left in stock (+2.9% revenue per client) - Saying other people are watching this product (+2.3%) - Time limited offer (+1.5%) I did not see mention of combining these factors. I doubt the gains are cumulative. My main takeaway is that most optimizations are not worthy if you have the opportunity to spend your time/money…

>> - Saying there are just a handful items left in stock (+2.9% revenue per client)

I appreciate this one, as long as it's actually true. Many times I've been on the fence about something, come back the next to to find out it was gone and wasn't going to be restocked. Knowing would have changed my decision. On the other hand, sometimes I've bought something and the number claimed to be in stock didn't change for months after. THAT'S a dick move.

Same with #2. Time limited offers make sense when you're trying to attract attention or compete with other sales (e.g. opening day sales, Black Friday, etc.) Some brick-and-mortar stores have time-limited offers constantly, and then it's clearly just manipulative.

Re: What works in e-commerce – A meta-analysis of online experiments [pdf]

#52

Post by omarchowdhury »

ourmandave wrote: post #48
Iv wrote: post #25

tl;dr: The 3 items possibly statistically significant are: - Saying there are just a handful items left in stock (+2.9% revenue per client) - Saying other people are watching this product (+2.3%) - Time limited offer (+1.5%) I did not see mention of combining these factors. I doubt the gains are cumulative. My main takeaway is that most optimizations are not worthy if you have the opportunity to spend your time/money…

Hotels.com uses #2 ("X people have looked at hotels in this area in the last hour.") and it feels like a dick move.

Why is that a dick move if it's true?

Re: What works in e-commerce – A meta-analysis of online experiments [pdf]

#53

Post by Raphmedia »

sweezyjeezy wrote: post #24
JorgeGT wrote: post #23

The PwC assurance report URL gives a 404: http://www.qubit.com/sites/default/files/pdf/pwc-qubit-assur...

Apologies : http://www.qubit.com/sites/default/files/pdf/pwc-qubit-assur...

Now that's pretty bad. There is a modal that open before the document is displayed.

"Chrome PDF Viewer

Click YES to accept the terms of the disclaimer on page 1 of this document.

If you click NO the document will close.

[OK] [CANCEL]"

Not only does this want me to agree to something before displaying it, the legally binding options (Yes / No) aren't even choices in the modal.

Re: What works in e-commerce – A meta-analysis of online experiments [pdf]

#54

Post by Silhouette »

gwern wrote: post #38
Silhouette wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be great to see the max uplift achieved for each category Indeed. What matters most with these kinds of experiments isn't really the average results, but what is possible and the distribution among beneficial results only . After all, the whole point of A/B testing is to try experiments and then either keep the changes if they improve results or stay with what you've already got if the changes didn't bring a…

> isn't really the average results, but what is possible and the distribution among beneficial results only No, the bad results also matter: you are still spending visitors and revenues in testing out bad variants, which is part of determining the costs and benefits. Even with a bandit approach, you incur logarithmic regret in the number of variants. And testing a bad variant is common: the best category, 'scarcity',…

(Hence the final sentence of my previous comment.)

Re: What works in e-commerce – A meta-analysis of online experiments [pdf]

#55

Post by cylinder »

kossae wrote: post #49
nik736 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's simply false. There are always categories or "side"-categories that can be highly profitable and big stores only care about as a side business (small category in their store). Being a small category for a huge store means they don't care about that category too much but it doesn't mean there isn't a lot of cash to be made. I've helped several companies to build an online store that did exactly that and they ar…

Agreed. I work for a company in such a niche and there are definitely side-niche markets still out there for people to find and dominate, sometimes even on SEO alone. A small piece of a huge pie is still a very large piece to me.

Have a good example of one that took that piece? Outside of Amazon

Re: What works in e-commerce – A meta-analysis of online experiments [pdf]

#56

Post by [deleted] »

_jal wrote: post #37
gruez wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or flight/hotel/car rental booking websites. Google flights is a notable exception.

The easiest way to make me go somewhere else is to adopt these tactics. They make me feel like I'm locked in a battle of wits with an autistic con-artist, or maybe a suspicious Fed - if weird rituals are not faithfully observed under conditions of vast information asymmetry and artificial stress, I will suffer. There's no hope of avoiding that with airlines for me - I don't fly enough to avoid the prole line. But lit…

[deleted]

Re: What works in e-commerce – A meta-analysis of online experiments [pdf]

#57

Post by draaglom »

cylinder wrote: post #26

Well, running a rudimentary eBay store you realize these things help pretty quickly, but it's good to have data. However... Starting a new e-commerce property? Good luck finding traffic in anything profitable. Amazon and other Giants dominate search rankings so I'm not sure how you will find your traffic unless you create a new niche. Maybe you're a thought leader in a hobbyist space, that can work... But you're not…

I'm not saying it's not hard, but success is very much possible.

E.g. Shopify handled $15.4 billion worth of transactions[1] in 2016, and that's just one platform.

[1]: https://www.shopify.com/2016

Re: What works in e-commerce – A meta-analysis of online experiments [pdf]

#58

Post by inopinatus »

Inconsistencies to report.

Page 2:

    • scarcity (stock pointers) +2.9% uplift
    • urgency (countdown timers) +2.3% uplift
    • social proof (informing users of others’ behaviour) +1.5% uplift
Page 6 table 2.2:

    scarcity 2.9%
    social proof 2.3%
    urgency 1.5%

Re: What works in e-commerce – A meta-analysis of online experiments [pdf]

#59

Post by pbowyer »

nik736 wrote: post #39
cylinder wrote: post #26

Well, running a rudimentary eBay store you realize these things help pretty quickly, but it's good to have data. However... Starting a new e-commerce property? Good luck finding traffic in anything profitable. Amazon and other Giants dominate search rankings so I'm not sure how you will find your traffic unless you create a new niche. Maybe you're a thought leader in a hobbyist space, that can work... But you're not…

That's simply false. There are always categories or "side"-categories that can be highly profitable and big stores only care about as a side business (small category in their store). Being a small category for a huge store means they don't care about that category too much but it doesn't mean there isn't a lot of cash to be made. I've helped several companies to build an online store that did exactly that and they ar…

Can you give any examples of small categories? I can't think of any, let alone get my brain round what kind of thing they would be.

Re: What works in e-commerce – A meta-analysis of online experiments [pdf]

#60

Post by thefalcon »

Raphmedia wrote: post #53
sweezyjeezy wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apologies : http://www.qubit.com/sites/default/files/pdf/pwc-qubit-assur...

Now that's pretty bad. There is a modal that open before the document is displayed. "Chrome PDF Viewer Click YES to accept the terms of the disclaimer on page 1 of this document. If you click NO the document will close. [OK] [CANCEL]" Not only does this want me to agree to something before displaying it, the legally binding options (Yes / No) aren't even choices in the modal.

Thankfully, clicking CANCEL opens the PDF anyway.
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