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Stock market graph on LED screen monitor 

<p id="2363" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">First off, who am I and why am I asking this question?</p><p id="579f" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">I’m Dave, I’ve been involved in experimentation (online A/B tests) for the best part of 15 years. The company I work for want to explore using Adobe Target for A/B testing.</p><p id="5a9f" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">A wee bit of backstory:<br>Chance put me into a company you might have heard of, booking.com.</p><p id="b8e8" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">Little did I know back then what a revolutionary business experience I’d landed in, in many ways, with the culture of experimentation being at the core of it all.</p><p id="89c8" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">Being a bit naive and still fresh-faced in the NL, I moved on to other companies with this new-found knowledge. I set out to spread this way of working in each and every role.</p><p id="e5d9" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">Pivotal down-the-rabbit-hole moment.</p><p id="84a0" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">One, two skip a few (jobs) and fast forward to the present day where the love for the subject has grown, exponentially. If you’re just getting started on this topic, prepare yourself, it goes VERY deep.</p><p id="0033" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">When it comes to A/B testing tools, these things are essential to get right as many businesses don’t have enough knowledge to ask the right questions to discover if the tool that is meant to help them make critical decisions is wholly reliable.</p><p id="0dc1" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">Having used : VWO, Optimizely, Maximiser, Google Optimise, SiteSpect and Webtrends Optimise, I’ve racked up quite some experience and learned along the way about what questions to ask and some of the pitfalls these individual platforms have. From caps on traffic (go over and you’ll have to pay), to winners being called way too early, to delays in cron jobs of up to 12 hours to see the results (what if the test is killing conversion?) to bloat applications claiming to be useful UX insight generators (but with no means of exporting the data).<br>Of this list, I’d say SiteSpect is the tool of choice, my only qualm with it would be the intuitiveness of the interface, yet I’m told a lot of work has been done on that in recent years. (They are super good at customer support though)</p><p id="f0f4" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">Enter Adobe Target.</p><p id="0e5d" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">Am I biased? Of course. But opinions need to challenged, even our own, so aiming to enter this with as little bias as possible — why are we at this juncture?<br>This is the platform that our parent company is using (via an agency, another bugbear I have, a lot of CRO agencies don’t know what they are doing). I’ve been asked to provide some questions, being a ‘subject-matter-expert’ in the process of evaluating if the platform is suitable for our needs.<br>Having just witnessed Google Optimise fall into its grave (hurrah!) here we are faced with a platform that is&nbsp;<a class="az hm" href="https://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2020/the-perils-of-using-google-analytics-user-counts-in-a-b-testing/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" data-mce-href="https://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2020/the-perils-of-using-google-analytics-user-counts-in-a-b-testing/"><em class="zh">rumoured</em>&nbsp;to use the same algorithm GA uses to calculate sessions&nbsp;</a>— HyperLogLog++ (Thanks to&nbsp;<a class="az hm" href="https://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2020/the-perils-of-using-google-analytics-user-counts-in-a-b-testing/#authorStart" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" data-mce-href="https://blog.analytics-toolkit.com/2020/the-perils-of-using-google-analytics-user-counts-in-a-b-testing/#authorStart"><strong class="oc gl">Georgi Georgiev</strong></a><strong class="oc gl">)</strong></p><p id="32c9" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">Rumoured.<br>We&nbsp;<strong class="oc gl">have to know this as fact</strong>&nbsp;before making the decision to use a tool that has a fluctuation in traffic distribution by a +/-2%. As explained in the article above, this has a major impact on statistical significance (p-value). It quite literally is the difference between the true and false. But who’d know if we don’t get a definitive answer on if the tool uses this method of traffic distribution?</p><p id="9d9f" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">So we asked.</p><blockquote class="zi zj zk"><p id="aa0e" class="yn yo zh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph=""><strong class="oc gl">Does AT use hyperloglog++ algorithm for traffic distribution?</strong></p><em>“Adobe Target leverages different methods for traffic distribution for different activity types. For an A/B test, Target will distribute traffic randomly based on the users identified traffic split in the A/B test setup. For example, if a customer has an A/B/C/D test by default Target will allocate 25% of the traffic to each experience, however the user has the ability to change that allocation if they so choose. If an Auto-Allocate test is chosen then Target will leverage the Thompson Sampling method to place more visitors in the better performing experiences. If an Auto-Target or Automated Personalization activity is chosen, then Target will leverage an ensemble of algorithms (Thompson Sampling and Random Forest) to match each visitor to the experience best suited for them. For more details on how Target works, see:&nbsp;</em><a class="az hm" href="https://eur06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexperienceleague.adobe.com%2Fdocs%2Ftarget%2Fusing%2Fintroduction%2Fhow-target-works.html%3Flang%3Den&amp;data=05%7C01%7CDavid.Powell%40webfleet.com%7C1dbbd69b38d04d4fba4b08dbf113b75f%7Ce648a6341151497c97970f975bddecc0%7C0%7C0%7C638368839252586292%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=LwoWN3f3oAaHUdkkUq1keHS%2B4%2FON0h53%2BMwDIS3K6kU%3D&amp;reserved=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" data-mce-href="https://eur06.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexperienceleague.adobe.com%2Fdocs%2Ftarget%2Fusing%2Fintroduction%2Fhow-target-works.html%3Flang%3Den&amp;data=05%7C01%7CDavid.Powell%40webfleet.com%7C1dbbd69b38d04d4fba4b08dbf113b75f%7Ce648a6341151497c97970f975bddecc0%7C0%7C0%7C638368839252586292%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=LwoWN3f3oAaHUdkkUq1keHS%2B4%2FON0h53%2BMwDIS3K6kU%3D&amp;reserved=0"><em>https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/target/using/introduction/how-target-works.html?lang=en</em>﻿</a></blockquote><p id="246a" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">The reply, is at best, an effort to not answer the question.<br>Information was given on how traffic can be spilt into percentages for A/B testing.<br>As far as we can tell, there are areas of AT that do work as expected BUT the A/B testing feature, alarm bells ring.<br>How do we arrive that this conclusion?<br>In a separate question, about SRM (sample ratio mismatching) we wanted to know if there was any notifications in place to warn us of experiments falling foul to this peril.<br>The response included a link to a 3rd party tool that can be added-on.<br><a class="az hm" href="https://www.miaprova.com/blog/sample-ratio-mismatch-srm/" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" data-mce-href="https://www.miaprova.com/blog/sample-ratio-mismatch-srm/">https://www.miaprova.com/blog/sample-ratio-mismatch-srm/</a></p><p id="d3f0" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">Quote from the website:</p><blockquote class="zi zj zk"><p id="9f41" class="yn yo zh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph=""><strong class="oc gl">Automated Personalization, Experience Targeting</strong>, and&nbsp;<strong class="oc gl">Auto-Allocate Activity</strong>&nbsp;types&nbsp;<strong class="oc gl">have logic to promote differences in sample distribution</strong>&nbsp;across Activity variants. MiaProva provides this service for all&nbsp;<strong class="oc gl">A/B Activities, Multivariate Activities, and Adobe Recommendations.</strong></p></blockquote><p id="bf02" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">So, from what can be deduced from the above, the traffic distribution in A/B activities, MVT and recommendations&nbsp;<em class="zh">have an issue</em>.<br>Now, we don’t know if it’s is attributable to HLL++ because that hasn’t been answered, but we do know it’s not to be trusted and requires external software to operate in a manner that could make the tool&nbsp;<em class="zh">maybe</em>&nbsp;<em class="zh">trustworthy.</em></p><p id="62f5" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">Does this sound like a representation of a solid&nbsp;<a class="az hm" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_controlled_trial" target="_blank" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" data-mce-href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_controlled_trial">RCT</a>?</p><p id="af58" class="pw-post-body-paragraph yn yo uh oc b yp yq yr ys yt yu yv yw nm yx yy yz nr za zb zc nw zd ze zf zg la bq" data-selectable-paragraph="">Put it this way, I’d not risk my business-decision making on it.</p>

Can Adobe Target be trusted?

<h2>Introduction</h2><p>Maximizing website conversion rates is crucial for any business looking to succeed in the online world. A high conversion rate means that more visitors are taking the desired action on your website, whether it's making a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing to a newsletter. In this blog post, we will explore some effective strategies to help you optimize your website and boost conversion rates.</p><h2>1. Clear Call-to-Action</h2><p>One of the most important elements of a high-converting website is a clear and compelling call-to-action (CTA). Your CTA should be prominently displayed on your website and use persuasive language to encourage visitors to take action. Whether it's "Buy Now," "Sign Up," or "Learn More," make sure your CTA stands out and is easily clickable.</p><h3><br></h3><h2>2. Streamlined Checkout Process</h2><p>For e-commerce websites, a streamlined checkout process is essential for maximizing conversion rates. Make sure your checkout process is simple, intuitive, and requires minimal steps. Eliminate any unnecessary form fields and offer guest checkout options to reduce friction and increase the likelihood of completing a purchase.</p><h2>3. Engaging and Persuasive Content</h2><p>Your website's content plays a significant role in converting visitors into customers. Craft engaging and persuasive copy that clearly communicates the value of your products or services. Use storytelling techniques, customer testimonials, and compelling visuals to capture your audience's attention and build trust.</p><h3><br></h3><h2>4. Mobile Optimization</h2><p>In today's mobile-first world, optimizing your website for mobile devices is no longer optional. A responsive design ensures that your website looks and functions flawlessly on any screen size. Mobile optimization is not only important for user experience but also for search engine rankings, as Google prioritizes mobile-friendly websites in search results.</p><h2>5. Social Proof</h2><p>Include social proof on your website to build credibility and trust with your visitors. Testimonials, reviews, case studies, and social media mentions are powerful tools for influencing purchasing decisions. Showcase positive feedback from satisfied customers to demonstrate the value and quality of your products or services.</p><h3><br></h3><h2>6. A/B Testing</h2><p>A/B testing is a valuable technique for optimizing your website's conversion rates. By testing different variations of your website elements, such as headlines, CTA buttons, or page layouts, you can determine which version performs better. Use A/B testing tools to gather data and make data-driven decisions to continuously improve your website's conversion rates.</p><h2>7. Fast Loading Speed</h2><p>Website loading speed is a critical factor in user experience and conversion rates. Slow-loading websites frustrate visitors and increase bounce rates. Optimize your website's performance by compressing images, minifying code, and leveraging caching techniques. Regularly monitor your website's loading speed and make necessary improvements to ensure a seamless user experience.</p><h3><br></h3><h2>8. Personalization</h2><p>Personalizing the user experience can significantly impact conversion rates. Use data and analytics to understand your audience better and deliver personalized content, product recommendations, or offers. Tailoring your website to individual preferences and behaviors creates a more engaging and relevant experience, increasing the likelihood of conversion.</p><h2>Conclusion</h2><p>Maximizing website conversion rates requires a combination of strategic elements, including clear CTAs, persuasive content, mobile optimization, social proof, A/B testing, fast loading speed, and personalization. By implementing these strategies and continuously monitoring and optimizing your website, you can improve your conversion rates and drive business growth.</p>

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Can Adobe Target be trusted?

Maximizing Website Conversion Rates