Top all-time · #1853
Optimizely
Company blog · blog.optimizely.combusinessdata
Optimizely is the company blog at blog.optimizely.com, writing about business and data. Since 2010, 38 different Hacker News readers have linked it 103 times, most often “The Optimizely Blog - A/B Testing You'll Actually Use”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (14) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Optimizely's blog for A/B testing examples and company data, such as Obama campaign testing and a Telegraph latency result. One commenter says they always read it.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 14 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Embark on a journey of discovery with our captivating content. Delve into a myriad of topics, from insightful analysis to thought-provoking discussions
Most-linked posts?
- The Optimizely Blog - A/B Testing You'll Actually Use3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-11-30
- Statistics for the Internet Age: The Story Behind Optimizely’s New Stats Engine3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-01-20
- Optimizely Raises $28 Million to Go Global2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-04-10
- Optimizely Open-Sources Guiders.js, a Library to Help You Guide New Users2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-06-23
What Hacker News says?
[Disclaimer: I previously worked for Optimizely as predictive analytics PM - but no longer work there, and don't speak for the company.] Optimizely has a bandit based 'traffic auto-allocation' feature in production on select enterprise plans [1]; bandits are excellent in a wide range of situations, and have many advantages, but like anything, have design parameters and there are some caveats you have to be aware of…
Comment linking /2015/03/04/bayesian-vs-frequentist-statistics/
on “20 lines of code that beat A/B testing (2012)”Submitted How Obama Raised $60 Million by Running a Simple Experiment as a story · 211 points
HN discussionIn this case you're probably right but in general, latency can make a big impact on profit and revenue. For example Marissa Mayer claimed (though this was in 2006) that a 500ms delay directly caused a 20% drop in traffic and revenue: https://glinden.blogspot.com/2006/11/marissa-mayer-at-web-20... Optimizely found that for The Telegraph, adding a 4s delay led to a 10% drop in pageviews: https://blog.optimizely.com/20…
Comment linking /2016/07/13/how-does-page-load-time-impact-engagement/
on “Things I learnt making a fast website”Submitted Optimizely Open-Sources Guiders.js, a Library to Help You Guide New Users as a story · 192 points
HN discussion[I'm a PM @ Optimizely] We were asked about this article before, on our community forums, and one of our statisticians, David, wrote a detailed reply to this article's concerns about one- vs two-tailed testing, which might be of interest [3rd from the top]: https://community.optimizely.com/t5/Strategy-Culture/Let-s-t... Additionally, since then, as other commenters have mentioned, we've completely overhauled how we…
Comment linking /2015/01/20/statistics-for-the-internet-age-the-story-behind-optimizelys-new-stats-engine/
on “How Optimizely Almost Got Me Fired (2014)”Submitted First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win as a story · 156 points
HN discussionFrom a blog post last year, you can calculate an absolute minimum; March 2013 - "Double digit millions revenue run rate." So a minimum monthly rate in 2013 would be ~$850k, so a minimum monthly rate for March 2014 would then be $1.7M. http://blog.optimizely.com/2013/04/10/optimizely-raises-28-m...
Comment linking /2013/04/10/optimizely-raises-28-million-to-go-global/
on “Optimizely Raises $57 Million”Submitted Optimizely (YC W10) Increases Homepage Conversion Rate by 29% as a story · 146 points
HN discussionHey, If you are interested in learning more about the problems we solved, we lay them out in much more detail in our blog post. It’s a meaty topic and so the post is not short. http://blog.optimizely.com/2015/01/20/statistics-for-the-int... In a few sentences: in the past if you didn’t use a sample size calculator properly (set a sample size up front and only evaluate test results at that time) and had tests with a…
Comment linking /2015/01/20/statistics-for-the-internet-age-the-story-behind-optimizelys-new-stats-engine/
on “Optimizely Statistics Engine”Submitted Optimizely Raises $57 Million as a story · 133 points
HN discussionThanks for your comment. This is Darwish, the Product Manager working on Stats Engine. You are correct "classic statistics" is the method we used in the past. It also what is most commonly used in industry (the main reason we started with this method). This was not an easy project for us to take on, but after talking to customers and looking at our historical experiment data, it was clear how important this problem…
Comment linking /2015/01/20/statistics-for-the-internet-age-the-story-behind-optimizelys-new-stats-engine/
on “Optimizely Statistics Engine”Submitted Optimizely Raises $28 Million to Go Global as a story · 123 points
HN discussionBut I can make $60 million https://blog.optimizely.com/2010/11/29/how-obama-raised-60-m...
Comment linking /2010/11/29/how-obama-raised-60-million-by-running-a-simple-experiment/
on “The hidden costs of A/B testing”Submitted Optimizely (YC W10) Launches Interactive Mode, Cross-Browser Testing, and More as a story · 89 points
HN discussionThanks! If you look back you can see we've been growing at a pretty steady clip every since we launched: http://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Optimizely However you are right that there does seem to be an inflection point in May 2012. I can only speculate why this happened. Here are a few possible reasons: 1. We got really lucky with a bunch of great press at the end of April including a phenomenal piece in Wired:…
Comment linking /2012/05/30/optimizely-surpasses-google-website-optimizer-and-raises-money-to-battle-omniture/
on “Optimizely Surpasses Omniture Test&Target”Submitted The Most Misleading Measure of Response Time: Average as a story · 78 points
HN discussionMany companies in the A/B testing and optimization space publish a lot of resources in the form of blog posts, case studies and white papers that are well researched and based on real metrics. Here are some links to get started. http://monetate.com/resources/ http://monetate.com/blog/ (Disclosure: I work at Monetate!) http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/case-studie…
Comment linking /
on “Apptimize (YC S13) Brings Reliable A/B Testing To Native iOS & Android Apps”Submitted Optimizely Raises $58M as a story · 76 points
HN discussionHere's two super easy test ideas that can produce big wins. 1. Change text, specifically around your value proposition. Emphasize different things and see what happens. 2. Remove content. Make the page more focused on what's important. Here's an example that increased account creation by 43% at Optimizely: http://blog.optimizely.com/2012/10/09/optimizelys-100000th-e...
Comment linking /2012/10/09/optimizelys-100000th-experiment/
on “Busting the small startups can't A/B test myth”Submitted Optimizely (YC W10) launches super simple behavioral targeting for A/B testing as a story · 56 points
HN discussionHow Obama's campaign tested: http://blog.optimizely.com/2013/01/15/how-obamas-campaign-te...
Comment linking /2013/01/15/how-obamas-campaign-team-sourced-ab-tests-from-user-feedback/
on “A/B testing at the Romney Campaign”Submitted Introducing Optimizely for iOS: Developer Preview as a story · 54 points
HN discussionAuthor here. So yeah: site seals link to useful info, but their UI doesn't encourage users to click on it: instead it expects users to use the presence of an image in the browsers content area as a source of trust. Most of HN already knows that, so more importantly: - The reason the site seal uses JS (rather than a simple link) is that the link is actually to the CA's sales page, not the site report - there's no 'no…
Comment linking /2013/12/08/ab-test-assumption-security-badges-increase-conversions/
on “SSL 'site seals' are even worse than you thought”Submitted Optimizely Surpasses Omniture Test&Target as a story · 54 points
HN discussionNot books, but I always read these blogs: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ http://blog.optimizely.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: What is your favorite book on A/B testing”Submitted Why Experiment Server-Side? as a story · 46 points
HN discussionBlogspam - original link: http://blog.optimizely.com/introducing-guidersjs-an-open-sou...
Comment linking /introducing-guidersjs-an-open-source-guider-e
on “a thread”Submitted Stop Launching. Start Rolling Out as a story · 41 points
HN discussionSubmitted Optimizely (YC W10) lays off 10% as a story · 36 points
HN discussionSubmitted Optimizely Acquired by Episerver as a story · 33 points
HN discussion
