PSA: That 'quick landing page fix' took me 6 weeks to actually finish

Everyone said a simple landing page tweak would take a day max. I tried swapping out a headline and button color based on a/b testing advice. Three versions later, my conversion rate dropped by 12% and I had to undo everything. Then I spent another 3 weeks just getting the analytics to show the right data cause I messed up the tracking code. Has anyone else found that small changes snowball into bigger problems when you don't test enough?

2 comments

2 Comments

dylan_brown3012d ago

Has anyone tried just walking away from the code for a day or two? I've had problems where I'm so deep in a small fix that I can't see the bigger picture, and coming back fresh makes me realize the whole approach was wrong. Sometimes the real fix isn't changing the button or the text, it's realizing the original design was actually working fine. Maybe the snowball effect happens because we react to data too fast without stepping back to see if the data even means what we think. Like, maybe that 12% drop was just random noise and not a real signal at all.

logan52512d ago

The whole "walk away for a day" thing sounds nice in theory but most of us don't have that kind of time when a client or boss is breathing down your neck. @dylan_brown30 brings up a good point though about the original design maybe being fine, but I still think people overreact to normal fluctuations in data. A 12% drop in a week could just be bad luck or a holiday weekend messing with traffic patterns. Honestly, half the time I'll spend a week "fixing" something that probably didn't need fixing in the first place because I got spooked by a random dip. Its just the nature of working with analytics - you see a line go down and your brain immediately says change everything before you even know what's real.