Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

kalzumeus.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 164 posts

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#101

Post by ovi256 »

akldfgj wrote: post #99
aresant wrote: post #54

At ConversionVoodoo we've found that the gains pulled out of cart-work are staggering vs. other areas in your funnel - 50%+ improvements to be had even on high volume / "well optimized" projects (10k+ sales/mo). Three easy places to start: a) Simplify the UI - Make it as simple as possible for people to enter their payment details - large fonts, cross-browser tested, minimal pages, optimized for the lowest screen res…

Wow, I am not a target customer for modern e-commerce. I would never return to a store that had behaviors like this: > e) Implement a Cart Abandon strategy - either sending "instant discounts" via email good for 24hrs to complete order, Training users to haggle at checkout and not trust the list prices > calling dropped carts. harassing people offline after they leave your store? > or hitting a pop-up of live help Do…

patio11 and other wise people have said this much better than me, but here goes: you are not like most people. You are likely to be a hacker, engineer or at least a computer power user. Most people are not. These techniques will work and print money with these other people which are not like you, and they are the majority.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#102

Post by ovi256 »

akldfgj wrote: post #100
patio11 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got married. Lots of balls to juggle. "Send credit card statements to VA for entry into the bookkeeping software which automatically populates a few stats on the BCC website" wasn't very high on the list. My actual spend is probably as high as ever, but "Log into AdWords to check" also hasn't been high on the list.

VA?

Virtual assistant. Cheap off-shore outsourcing via the internet, a staple of lean startup.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#104

Post by shinratdr »

akldfgj wrote: post #99
aresant wrote: post #54

At ConversionVoodoo we've found that the gains pulled out of cart-work are staggering vs. other areas in your funnel - 50%+ improvements to be had even on high volume / "well optimized" projects (10k+ sales/mo). Three easy places to start: a) Simplify the UI - Make it as simple as possible for people to enter their payment details - large fonts, cross-browser tested, minimal pages, optimized for the lowest screen res…

Wow, I am not a target customer for modern e-commerce. I would never return to a store that had behaviors like this: > e) Implement a Cart Abandon strategy - either sending "instant discounts" via email good for 24hrs to complete order, Training users to haggle at checkout and not trust the list prices > calling dropped carts. harassing people offline after they leave your store? > or hitting a pop-up of live help Do…

> Training users to haggle at checkout and not trust the list prices

Definitely, this is quite a risky one. Just speaking for myself if I notice a Cart Abandon strategy, I will always abandon my cart in the future to keep getting the dicsount.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#105

Post by Silhouette »

tptacek wrote: post #66
Silhouette wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's lovely, and I wish them luck, but having some sort of closed beta is about a million miles away from having a service I can check out to make sure that it works. And by works, I don't just mean payment mechanics and security, I also mean PCI/DSS compliance, EU data protection compliance, VAT handling, financial reporting, and all those other little details that are often completely different here from the US.…

I don't understand why we should avoid talking about services that produce significant, easily measured uplifts for US companies just because those services aren't available in Europe. I absolutely understand the frustration being expressed and am not suggesting that these threads are the wrong place to express it. But the idea that we should "lay off the Stripe hype" sounds wrong. It's entirely possible that we're n…

I don't understand why we should avoid talking about services that produce significant, easily measured uplifts for US companies just because those services aren't available in Europe.

Because at this point, it isn't newsworthy, it's really just noise/advertising. It's not as if anyone reading HN who can use Stripe hasn't heard about them many times already. If they launch an actual service that anyone outside the US can sign up for, then great, let's shout from the rooftops. If there is something constructive that the rest of us can do to help them achieve that goal, by all means, let's talk about it. Otherwise, with due respect to Patrick, there isn't really very much new and interesting to discuss in this area and I would prefer that HN concentrate on things that are new and/or interesting (such as the other parts of Patrick's post).

Startups need all the help they can get.

Yes, we do. And if and when a service like Stripe starts to offer it, I'll be all for having the news on HN. But until then, yet another group hug about how wonderful Stripe is followed by yet another round of moaning that it's not available anywhere outside the US and yet another apologetic post from one of the developers saying they're working on it is a bit like reading about every new Firefox release on Slashdot.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#106

Post by FooBarWidget »

dcaldwell wrote: post #40

I work in the same co-working facility as an education-based startup that switched from using PayPal(where user gets redirected to PayPal) to Stripe (completely branded checkout) and their conversion rates increased 40% overnight and have stayed at those levels. After digging into their API, we're actually building our new company, MoonClerk, on top of Stripe's API. We'll basically be an abstraction layer on top of S…

How is this possible? Through Paypal customers can also pay with credit cards, and even more. They can use checks, or bank transfers (very important in Europe where credit cards are not as popular), etc. Why would usage of Paypal decrease conversion compared to pure credit cards?

My guess is that a lot of customers don't know what Paypal is and don't realize they can just use their credit card.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#107

Post by angryasian »

dennisgorelik wrote: post #103
angryasian wrote: post #70

could it just be his audience, I'm incredibly against adding my credit card on any site.

You are different from most of users buying on Internet. Most prefer entering credit card directly.

i find that really hard to believe in this day and age of cyber criminal and so much activity in terms of stolen identities.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#108

Post by nickknw »

"(A customer had — I kid you not — a lightning strike hit her computer during checkout, and as a consequence the JS callback fired 36 times. This resulted in 36 transactions, which Stripe processed without complaint. Oops."

I can't believe the good old 'computer was hit by a lightning bolt' wasn't in one of your test cases, Patrick! I mean it's so obvious :P

More seriously, that is one of the wildest reasons for a bug I think I've ever heard.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#109

Post by pbreit »

shinratdr wrote: post #104
akldfgj wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I am not a target customer for modern e-commerce. I would never return to a store that had behaviors like this: > e) Implement a Cart Abandon strategy - either sending "instant discounts" via email good for 24hrs to complete order, Training users to haggle at checkout and not trust the list prices > calling dropped carts. harassing people offline after they leave your store? > or hitting a pop-up of live help Do…

> Training users to haggle at checkout and not trust the list prices Definitely, this is quite a risky one. Just speaking for myself if I notice a Cart Abandon strategy, I will always abandon my cart in the future to keep getting the dicsount.

Firstly, the merchant still gets the sale and is happy (it's like boasting about getting 20% off at Bed Bath and Beyond). All the merchant has to do is skip an email here and there (if they want). This is to say: you have not found a loophole; you are not a concern to the merchant; no one should be frightened by this tactic because of your story.

Re: Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

#110

Post by sulife »

corkill wrote: post #58
stevoski wrote: post #28

I currently use FastSpring to handle purchases of my software. What's the advantage to using Stripe instead of FastSpring?

Depending on your volume a lot of cash. Fast Spring is 5.9% plus $.95 or 8.9% flat per order. Stripe 2.9% + 30 cents.

Chase Paymentech - ~1.9% + $0.15 <---- WINNER!
Post reply on HN