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Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

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Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#121

Post by foldr »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #92
blackoil wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always track signup/paying-users ratio. Purpose of landing/pricing page is to get the users to sign-up. Unless some dark pattern or misinformation is used to confuse users into sign-up, more users is a positive thing.

The problem with A/B test optimization is that, unless you're extremely careful, they naturally lead you to apply dark patterns and misinformation.

Ok, but the example we're discussing is one where the signup button was simply moved to a different position on the page. That's not a 'dark pattern'.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#122

Post by raghavbali »

otherme123 wrote: post #115
mquander wrote: post #22

I don't know if this calculator was good or bad, but the rationale sounds superficially ridiculous. > Visitors who didn't see the calculator were 16% more likely to sign up and 90% more likely to contact us than those who saw it. There was no increase in support tickets about pricing, which suggests users are overall less confused and happier. Of course if you hide the fact that your product might cost a lot of money…

> Of course if you hide the fact that your product might cost a lot of money from your users, more of them will sign up The problem with their calculator was that the users introduced slightly wrong data, or misunderstand what means some metric, and suddenly a 1000x the real price was shown. Their dilemma was "how to fix those cases", and the solution was "get rid of the messy calculator". But they are not hidding a…

why not fix the calculator in a way that avoids/mitigates scenarios where users get to wrong quotes and then do an A/B test? This setup seemingly tilts towards some sort of a dark pattern IMO

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#123

Post by II2II »

strken wrote: post #69
bruce511 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Of course, the pricing page became plain ugly, but that didn't matter, because "Signups are increasing!!" I'm not sure I'm following you here, so perhaps you'd care to elaborate? The GP critique was that it was perhaps just creating a problem elsewhere later on. I'm not seeing the similarity to your case where the change is cosmetic not functional. The issue of whitespace (padding) is subjective (see the conversat…

I think one problem is that a better design would move the button above the fold without ruining the spacing, and therefore achieve a better result with even higher lift, but someone focused on just the numbers wouldn't understand this. The fact that the A/B test has a big green number next to it doesn't mean you should stop iterating after one improvement.

The issue is that A/B testing only looks at outcomes, not reasons. There is a possibility that having the sign-up button above the fold wasn't the contributing factor here, or that it was only a contributing factor. Having to scroll through an estimate may lead a potential customer to believe that pricing is too complex or, worse, that the vendor is trying to hide something. Perhaps there are other reasons. The problem is that A/B testing will only tell you the what and not the why.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#124

Post by atoav »

refibrillator wrote: post #53

Upvoted to spread the immense wisdom in this post. But golly I must say the line can get blurry quickly. > Would anything of value be lost if this or that chunk of it was removed? In early stage projects I’ve seen this mentality backfire occasionally because it’s tough to estimate future value, especially for code and data. For example, one time in a greenfield project I created the initial SQL schema which had some…

The thing is that such features can also become a burden quickly. E.g. people know it is not used, so nobody bothers to write tests or other things that would be usually done and those things might come back to haunt you once it is and boom a good source for catastrophic failure is there. Also, when you implement it later you can shape it without having to rework a ton of code.

Don't get me wrong, I understand your point here — and if the feature is something that you know for sure will be needed later on, adding it in from the start instead of bolting it on later is absolutely the smart choice. You wouldn't pour a concrete foundation for a building after you built two floors — especially if you know from the start it is going to be a skyscraper you are building.

In fact my experience with software development is that good foundations make everything easier. The question is just whether the thing we're talking about is truly part of the fundament or rather some ornament that can easily be added in later.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#125

Post by M95D »

raghavbali wrote: post #122
otherme123 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course if you hide the fact that your product might cost a lot of money from your users, more of them will sign up The problem with their calculator was that the users introduced slightly wrong data, or misunderstand what means some metric, and suddenly a 1000x the real price was shown. Their dilemma was "how to fix those cases", and the solution was "get rid of the messy calculator". But they are not hidding a…

why not fix the calculator in a way that avoids/mitigates scenarios where users get to wrong quotes and then do an A/B test? This setup seemingly tilts towards some sort of a dark pattern IMO

Because the results were probably wrong because the inputs were wrong (exagerated by over-cautious users). There is no automated way to avoid that in a calculator; only a conversation with a real person (sales, tech support) will reveal the bad inputs.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#126

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

I just finished Elon Musk’s biography by Walter Isaacson and I was struck by how often this actually works. Whether you’re actually sending humans to the ISS, or building cars removing requirements and complexity is a surprisingly effective tactic.

I love his “algorithm” for getting shit done. The final step is, “If you don’t put back at least 10% of what you take out, you aren’t removing enough.”

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#127

Post by adamtaylor_13 »

QuantumGood wrote: post #82
infogulch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sympathetic to your situation, but it's possible that the senior was still right to remove it at the time, even if you were eventually right that the product would need it in the end. If I recall correctly they have a measure at SpaceX that captures this idea: The ratio of features added back a second time to total removed features. If every removed feature was added back, a 100% 'feature recidivism' (if you gran…

At one time Musk stated that SpaceX data suggested that needing to add back 15% of what was removed was a useful target. He suggested that some of the biggest problems came from failure to keep requirments simple enough due to smart people adding requirements, because they offered the most credible and seemingly well-reasoned bad ideas.

He also made it mandatory that all requirements had to be tied to a name. So there was no question as to why something was there.

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#128

Post by j33zusjuice »

autonomousErwin wrote: post #111
jessriedel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relatedly, there seemed to be no acknowledgement of the possibility of dark incentives: many businesses have found they can increase sales by removing pricing details so that prospective customers get deeper into the funnel and end up buying because of sunk time costs even though they would have preferred a competitor. Example: car dealerships make it a nightmare to get pricing information online, and instead cajole…

Would you consider doubling your prices so users perceive your product as having higher value a dark pattern?

Feels like it kinda fits under fake social proof. https://www.deceptive.design/types

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#129

Post by lucianbr »

Jensson wrote: post #96
lucianbr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you measure / calculate something like that? Seems like adding some amount back is the right situation, and not too much either, but putting a number on it is just arrogance.

> How would you measure / calculate something like that? SpaceX probably has stricter processes than your average IT shop, then it isn't hard to calculate stats like that. Then when you have the number, you tune it until you are happy, and now that number is your target. They arrived at 15%. This process is no different than test coverage numbers etc, its just a useful tool not arrogance.

I have no clue what you are saying. "They did it somehow"? How? Maybe they did not measure it, but Elon just imagined it. How can we tell the difference?

Re: Removing stuff is never obvious yet often better

#130

Post by lucianbr »

QuantumGood wrote: post #90
lucianbr wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you measure / calculate something like that? Seems like adding some amount back is the right situation, and not too much either, but putting a number on it is just arrogance.

Either accepting or dismissing the number without understanding its purpose or source can also be arrogance, but I agree that throwing a number out without any additional data is of limited, but not zero, usefulness. When I want to know more about a number, I sometimes seek to test the assumption that an order of magnitude more or less (1.5%, 150%) is well outside the bounds of usefulness—trying to get a sense of wha…

No, dismissing something that is claimed without evidence is not arrogance, but common sense.
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