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Stripe And A/B Testing Made Me A Small Fortune

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

#141

Post by snowwrestler »

lsh123 wrote: post #137
MBCook wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I know why I got this wrong. There are multiple levels of PCI compliance, right? I think we used services that allowed us to not have to be compliant with data at rest (since we didn't store it), but only the data in transit (or whatever the equivalent term is). This is by no means my area of expertise (as I have accidentally proven).

Absolutely, there are different levels. However, for all levels you have to do some work to achieve PCI compliance (and overall security of your system). There is no magic in this world :)

True, and the thing about PCI is that many apps probably could benefit from being forced to do this type of work.

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

#142

Post by sachingulaya »

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…

Live help drives conversions on our ecommerce site. Our customers ask questions more often than I would expect.

Cart abandonment coupons haven't worked for us at all. My thinking is that our 10% discount isn't steep enough but I have no data. Since I don't have any insight in to what people do after they abandon the cart I'm not sure throwing discounts at them is an effective strategy.

Calling dropped carts? That's not something we have the bandwidth to do.

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

#143

Post by simonw »

Silhouette wrote: post #105
tptacek wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"It's not as if anyone reading HN who can use Stripe hasn't heard about them many times already"

I'd heard of them, but I didn't know that their co-founder would run git bisect if you reported a bug. Plus, 350 up votes on this story suggest that it was worth posting on Hacker News.

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

#144

Post by nitrogen »

ovi256 wrote: post #101
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…

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 .

patio11 and other wise people have said this much better than me, but here goes: you are not like most people.

After realizing this, one must then get over the idea that accepting money from such people is unethical.

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

#145

Post by chmike »

peterjancelis wrote: post #90
corkill wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you need a SSN and EIN. https://answers.stripe.com/questions/if-i-have-an-ein-do-i-a...

I don't want to speak in Stripe's name but I suggest emailing Stripe and asking for an account based on EIN.

SSN shouldn't be published around since it is a key information to ones digital identity. I guess they do this for clients which are not companies.

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

#146

Post by babuskov »

sachingulaya wrote: post #142
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…

Live help drives conversions on our ecommerce site. Our customers ask questions more often than I would expect. Cart abandonment coupons haven't worked for us at all. My thinking is that our 10% discount isn't steep enough but I have no data. Since I don't have any insight in to what people do after they abandon the cart I'm not sure throwing discounts at them is an effective strategy. Calling dropped carts? That's n…

Through a lot of experimentation. I've found out that you need to offer at least 40% to get any significant conversion of the cart dropouts. At least for the shareware desktop software I sell.

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

#147

Post by thenomad »

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…

Just a bit of anecdata: I believe in Live Help. (And Harvey Dent, but that's not important right now.)

I can think of at least two occasions where having a Live Help function available on a site made the difference between me buying something and not buying it. One of those things (a sit-stand desk) was quite expensive.

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

#148

Post by StavrosK »

Silhouette wrote: post #140
StavrosK wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To clarify, I don't agree with Silhouette that we should "lay off the hype". If anything, Stripe deserves it. I just hate it because it always reminds me that I can't even try it out.

Apparently I misunderstood what you meant earlier. Apologies if I misrepresented your view.

Oh, that's quite all right, I was just clarifying.

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

#149

Post by csomar »

patio11 wrote: post #50
maximilianburke wrote: post #44

Patrick, I'm curious how you have been using Stripe as you are in Japan and it seems they only recently began expanding out of America. Is the business entity behind BCC registered in the US?

I signed up with my US address and banking information. "By registering for a Stripe Service Account, you are confirming to be either a legal resident of the United States, a United States citizen or a business entity authorized to conduct business by the state in which it operates." (Though I finally got a DBA from Illinois, um, yesterday. Not related to Stripe -- a hospital wasn't thrilled with the notion of writin…

Could you elaborate more on this? What's a US address, and how did you get a bank account?

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

#150

Post by rahoulb »

nitrogen wrote: post #144
ovi256 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

patio11 and other wise people have said this much better than me, but here goes: you are not like most people. After realizing this, one must then get over the idea that accepting money from such people is unethical.

Why is it unethical?

Many people are nervous - even scared - when purchasing online, because of the numerous stories of "having stuff hacked".

Live help lets them know there's a human being at the end of the line.

Abandoned carts are often a manifestation of that fear - so again, contacting them afterwards lets them know that there's a real person there.

And many people like the idea of something but when it comes to the actual commitment get cold feet - discounts can help in that case.

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