Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw10920 | Hacker News Reader

It'd be very interesting to see the results of some A/B tests where they looked at the effectiveness of a marketing funnel with some of these distracting features on and off.

I mean, I think we all know what the results would be, but I think that a lot of bean-counter types will only listen to beans counted...

View on HN

I think everyone would be surprised at the results. Humans are so good at thinking they are representative of other people.

The marketers would be surprised because they believe people need the shit they advertise.

Some devs would be surprised because this stuff is effective at getting a larger N - total sales funnel volume, not efficiency, is most of their goal.

Most devs would be surprised that it’s even something people talk about.

And the regular citizen like my mom would be surprised that such a thing even exists.

> Some devs would be surprised because this stuff is effective at getting a larger N - total sales funnel volume, not efficiency, is most of their goal.

This is a short-term/long-term tradeoff. If you have the choice between:

- N people into the funnel, 10% decide to join, the rest go away without a negative opinion, some of them even with a "not right now but maybe later" opinion

- 10*N people into the funnel, 2% decide to join, the rest go away with varying degrees of negative opinion

Short-term, the second choice will give you 2x the users joining. Long-term, the second choice will give your company a bad reputation.

Fortunately(?), most companies aren't expecting to survive long enough to see a bad reputation come back to bite them.

When it does, they can just buy good reputation for pittance. (Looking at you, Microsoft..)

A/B testing creative is pretty typical. I'm certain "flashy" ads that get your attention perform better. Of course, they change the style of your page, and if you don't like they way they make your site look, don't use them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com