Patrick Ruffini says the GOP needs to focus on what works, not what consultants say works. And that requires a new mindset:

Operatives — even digital ones — need to be willing to subject everything they do to randomized experiments to show what’s working and what isn’t. (If we did, we’d likely never hear another GOTV robocall again.) The top performers may not be the ones who hit on the first try — but those who can tweak and adjust to achieve the best result over the long run. In a political industry known for its brashness, the key to success moving forward may be an introspective and intellectually curious mindset that comes with constant testing and refinement.

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Restaurants choose their prices, menu layouts, and even item descriptions to maximize each table’s value:

Some restaurants “anchor” prices with a very expensive item that will make everything else look reasonable in comparison. If there’s a $50 steak on the menu, people are probably going to think, “Boy, this place is expensive,” Poundstone says. But if there’s a $100 burger next to it, they’re more likely to buy that $50 steak.

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Because you don’t know better than your customers what they want to do:

The boundaries between “desktop tasks” and “mobile tasks” are fluid, driven as much by the device’s convenience as they are by the ease of the task. Have you ever tried to quickly look up a bit of information from your tablet, simply because you’re too lazy to walk over to your computer? Typed in a lengthy email on your BlackBerry while sitting at your desk, temporarily forgetting your keyboard exists? Discovered that the process to book a ticket from your mobile was easier than using the desktop (looking at you, Amtrak!) because all the extra clutter was stripped away?

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Survey Monkey crunched the data:

Response rates were highest for survey invitations sent out on Monday, and lowest for invitations sent on Friday. On average, surveys sent out on Mondays received 10% more responses than average, and surveys sent out on Fridays received 13% fewer responses than average.

But don’t assume these results hold true for your list, and the full post has lots of caveats. Test!

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“A whale is a player that is willing to invest a significant amount of money in your game,” said Jared Psigoda, CEO of the browser game publisher Reality Squared Games, at Game Developers Conference Europe in August. “For most publishers out there … a handful of players make up a significant percentage of revenue, specifically once you get into the mid-hard-core, free-to-play type model.”

“The top 10 percent of players can account for as much as 50 percent of all in-app purchase revenue,” says Andy Yang, CEO of the mobile monetization research firm PlayHaven.

I wonder what the full distribution looks like. How much revenue does the top one percent drive? Or the bottom 50 percent?

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