One of Brad’s posts led me to The Winery Website Report Blog which so far has been fantastic. The initial post was about “failing to address a point of pain” in talking about the ‘hiatus’ of the Winery Report. It led me to a post titled “What should you put on your home page?” In it, there’s a link to a presentation (pdf - 2Mb) at eMetrics 2004 about Amazon and how they use automation and A/B testing to decide what goes on the home page. One of the coolest things about this is that it goes through some of their iterations and shows how data is often counter to intuition.

The bottom line - measure, measure, measure and let the best performing idea win. It’s hard to commit to this concept because designers, executives, product managers, all have their own ideas about what will and won’t work. The beauty of a consumer website is that if you’re willing to put yourself in a position to iterate efficiently, you can quickly find strategies that work.

Related Posts:

Adam Duvander - Simplicity Rules - Data Rules Amazon - Simpler Home Page Design Leads to Drop in Orders

Greg - Linden - Geeking with Greg - Talk on Amazon A/B Testing