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Lessons Learned: Innovation inside the box
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agoJust one part of this which runs counter to much of the advice given here on HN: > When new customers would try this product, they > weren't required to register at first. They could > simply come to the website and start using it. Only > after they started to have some success would the > system prompt them to register - and after that, > start to offer them premium features to pay with. > It was a slick example of lazy registration and a > freemium model. The underlying assumption was that > making it seamless for customers to ease into the > product was optimal. <snip> > > One day, the team decided to put that assumption to > the test. The experiment was easy to build (although > hard to decide to do): simply remove the "guest" > experience, and make everyone register right at the > start. To their surprise, the metrics didn't move at > all. Customers who were given the guest experience > were not any more likely to register, and they were > actually less likely to pay. In other words, all that > tri-mode code was complete waste. It is regularly suggested here that web sites should offer a "registration-free" mode, and only extra information from the visitor as and when they realise the benefits. Yet here is a quoted experiment that appears to run counter to that "obviously correct" model of working. We don't have any details on the experiment being quoted, andit's only one experiment, but this does serve to highlight the importance of doing experiments and measuring the changes. Without that, your guesses are just that. Guesses.