Over the past decade, the power of A/B testing has become an open secret of high-stakes web development. It’s now the standard (but seldom advertised) means through which Silicon Valley improves its online products. Using A/B, new ideas can be essentially focus-group tested in real time: Without being told, a fraction of users are diverted to a slightly different version of a given web page and their behavior compared against the mass of users on the standard site. If the new version proves superior—gaining more clicks, longer visits, more purchases—it will displace the original; if the new version is inferior, it’s quietly phased out without most users ever seeing it. A/B allows seemingly subjective questions of design—color, layout, image selection, text—to become incontrovertible matters of data-driven social science.

Google runs thousands of such tests every year to improve its search results and other products. In fact, Google runs so many simultaneous tests, Christian says, that “the percentage of users getting some kind of tweak may well approach 100 percent.” Using these same principles, the Obama campaign in 2008 used A/B testing to increase e-mail signups by 40 percent. It ran similar tests in the 2012 cycle.

Christian points out, though, that A/B testing is best for identifying incremental changes rather than the overhauls that may be necessary. In other words, effective marketing remains an art as well as a science. Marketers and web designers “may find themselves chasing ‘local maxima’—places where the A/B tests might create the best possible outcome within narrow constraints—instead of pursuing real breakthroughs.”

Tell me in the comments: how have you used A/B testing?

Yet too often, writing lacks any clarity at all, and we find ourselves unable to comprehend an author’s point–in no small part because of his impenetrable jargon and (perhaps inadvertent) obfuscation.

During one recent lecture I attended, the speaker went on at length about his firm’s “overseas entities” and how his customers “leveraged” this or that. Even the business school students he was addressing had a hard time puzzling out his real meaning.

This problem is particularly acute in non-profit writing. Those who market non-profits to the wider world, including fundraisers, often fall into the trap of writing material their audiences fail to understand.

Fortunately, the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation has assembled an insightful and highly amusing series of three articles by Tony Proscio to help non-profit writers (and anyone else) identify and root out jargon and improve clarity.

In the third and final booklet (link in PDF), Proscio synthesizes his argument:

Whenever I set out to write anything—and almost anytime I start to read anything more demanding than a cereal box—I find myself asking the two questions I’ve described here: Who’s supposed to do what to whom with how much? and What are we against? These are not the kinds of questions taught in great writing courses. They do not necessarily lead to more beautiful writing, if that is judged by aesthetic standards alone. But they have one overwhelming virtue that too much of today’s public-interest writing sorely lacks: They lead to the kind of information that nearly everyone wants and needs to know.

What techniques do you use to maintain clarity in your writing?

Long copy works, because people want as much benefit-oriented information as they personally need to make the purchase.

Some won’t read much of it before buying. Others will read every word.

The key is to make the presentation of this information — your copy and the visual elements of the page — context appropriate. It needs to look and feel like your audience expects content from you to look and feel…

If you try to throw garish colors, exclamation points, and yellow highlighter at your audience when that’s not what they expect to see, you lose. In more ways than one.

Photo: Flickr/Tony

• Lydia DePillis says Washington, D.C. needs a fiscally-conservative alternative to the lefty D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, the only think tank focused on the city’s local government.
• Are participants in marathons and other event-based fundraisers really donors in the same sense as direct-marketing donors? Tom Belford says no.
• Pork Barrel Barbecue has released a barbecue-scented fragrance. Really.
• It’s not clear why repairing ill-maintained local transit infrastructure ought to be a federal responsibility.
• Last but not least, Conan O’Brien spoke last week at Dartmouth’s commencement:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmDYXaaT9sA

In 2008, the Obama campaign tested the creative used on its website splash pages to maximize e-mail sign-ups and donations.

President Obama’s reelection campaign is doing the same thing. When you visit BarackObama.com today, you are automatically redirected to one of several splash pages, each of which has a different layout or call to action.

Variant 1: Campaign button

This simple landing page, decorated with a campaign button, asks site visitors a simple question and invites e-mail signup. If they do not wish to sign up, visitors are offered a bail-out link to the main campaign website.

Variant 2: Are you in?

This simple landing page is like Variant 1, only with the campaign logo in place of the button.

Variant 3: Are you in?—with the President

A twist on Variant 2, this page includes a large photo of President Obama overlaid in front of the signup form.

Variant 4: 2012 starts here—I’m in

This page swaps out the “Are you in?” question for a statement.

Variant 5: 2012 starts here—let’s go

Continuing the evolution begun in Variant 4, this one replaces the submission button text so it reads “let’s go!”

Variant 6: Fired up?—let’s go

This next variant again changes the main call to action, once again asking visitors a question.

Variant 7: Are you in?—no bailout

This one returns to the simplicity of Variant 2, but drops the “continue to website” bailout link that allows visitors to skip this splash page.

Variant 8: Sign up

Variant 8 tests some drier but perhaps more effective copy: “sign up for campaign updates” with a generic “submit” button. Sometimes being straightforward is best.

Variant 9: Be the first to know

This landing page variant makes site visitors an offer of exclusive information: “be the first to know.” The submission button now reads “sign up.”

Variant 10: Help build this campaign

Variant ten, in turn, appeals to visitors’ belief in the campaign’s mission and invites them to “help build this campaign.” The “from the ground up” and “join us” language suggests a certain exclusivity.

Variant 11: Are you in?—photo background

This is a very different take on the landing page, including a large photo of the President and a much smaller signup form using language from Variant 2.

Variant 12: Are you in?—photo background, take 2

Modifying Variant 12 slightly, this version includes the exclusive offer also seen in Variant 9.

Variant 13: Are you in?—photo background, take 3

Another take on Variant 11, this one repeats Variant 8’s to-the-point “sign up for campaign updates.”

Photo: Flickr/lynx81

• The District of Columbia government has sometimes been commendably lenient in enforcing its arbitrary zoning restrictions. Except sometimes it decides to enforce the regulations for political reasons.
• Mailer Mailer debunks seven common myths about e-mail marketing. They point out, for instance, that sending lots of messages doesn’t necessarily lead to more unsubscribes.
• Reach Mail, meanwhile, offers advice on the best time of day to send marketing e-mails.
• Phew: demand continues strong for workers with MBAs. (Not so much for JDs, though.)
• Last but not least, Amazon.com is now selling more Kindle books than physical books.

The Federal Register, within living memory about the size of a family Bible, today takes up about 30 feet of shelf space.

Out of these millions of words of small-print lawyerese, Obama’s regulatory czar, Cass Sunstein, has identified about 30 regulations he’d like to see repealed, as part of a review of regulations mandated by an executive order. That’s nice.

The winning splash page variant. Photo: Optimizely

President Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign ran an excellent online operation. Much of their success derived from their successful use of A/B testing.

In an article on Optimizely, Dan Siroker explains a test the Obama campaign ran on the website’s splash page. They tested both the content of the page–pictures and video–and the wording of the call to action. They used the winning variant through the rest of the campaign, driving increased signups and increased revenue.

Siroker also reminds us a marketer’s intuition isn’t necessarily right:

Before we ran the experiment, the campaign staff heavily favored “Sam’s Video” (the last one in the slideshow shown above). Had we not run this experiment, we would have very likely used that video on the splash page. That would have been a huge mistake since it turns out that all of the videos did worse than all of the images.

2. A few simple changes that can improve your e-commerce checkout page

In a post on Smashing Magazine, Christian Holst outlines 11 “fundamental guidelines” for e-commerce usability.

Perhaps the most universally relevant guideline is his suggestion to visually reinforce the security of credit card fields. This resolves an important issue that comes up with e-commerce forms of all sorts, including donation forms: “Customers might hesitate if credit card fields don’t appear secure (regardless of actual security).”

“By adding visual cues (such as borders, background color, and security icons and badges) around the form fields for credit cards,” Holst argues, “you can increase their perceived security for non-technical customers.”

Other tips include:

• Make the checkout process linear, without redirecting users to a previous step
• Apply clear labels to form fields and buttons
• Use shipping address as billing address by default
• Allow users to complete the transaction without registering
• Request only pertinent information

Implementing even some of these changes—testing, of course, to ensure they work—can result in large increases in conversion rate and revenue. Holst’s guide offers essential first steps for anyone looking to improve the effectiveness of their online transaction pages.

Photo: Flickr/Emily Lewis

• Keith Houston’s Shady Characters offers the secret history of glyphs like the octothorpe (#), the interrobang (‽) and the pilcrow (¶).
• The Washington Wizards have new uniforms. It’s about time.
• Megan McArdle suggests Groupon isn’t really a good deal for businesses, which may explain why deal quality seems to have declined of late.
• How Rand Paul is reshaping the debate in the Senate to promote limited government.
• Last but not least, the Pew Center is the latest group to release a superficial online quiz that tries to group people politically based on 20 questions. How does it categorize you?

More people would rather live here than anywhere “liveable.” Photo: Flickr/Martin Haesemeyer

• Why cities that people actually want to live in aren’t counted as “liveable” cities.
• Progressives are wrong, Burt Folsom explains: early Christians’ social compact was about private charity, not government redistribution.
• A neat infographic shows how long load times can drive website visitors away.
• Do sanctimonious op-eds about why atheists are better help atheists’ public image?
• How the minimum wage increases unemployment.
• Last but not least, Alex Tabarrok reports that the federal government is finally starting to sell off some of its assets. Uncle Sam owns fully 30 percent of the country’s land area.