A/B Test Your Business, Not Just Your Product

It’s become easy to A/B test web pages to see what works and what doesn’t. But the great entrepreneur applies A/B testing to his or her entire business. Here’s how.

Rather than making decisions based on what might or could work, great entrepreneurs try a lot of different approaches – from product features to marketing programs to hiring. They don’t base decisions on what “should” or “shouldn’t” work according to the common wisdom – they simply run a lot of little experiments to see what works and what doesn’t.

Will the animated click to buy button result in more conversions over the static one? The great entrepreneur tries out both and evaluates the data to see which one performs better. It turns out that animated click to buy buttons do result in more conversions, in some cases producing as much as a seven-fold increase.

In marketing programs, great entrepreneurs try a lot of things in small quantities to see what might work. Consumers are fickle – it’s hard to know how they’ll respond to a paid ad, an organic search result, an email newsletter, a presentation at a conference, or a renewal notice that encourages them to buy more rather than just renew. (As any marketing expert will tell you, a meaningful subset of customers who are offered the opportunity to purchase more when already making a purchase will do so.)

Successful entrepreneurs try it all, and then, even when they’ve found something that works really well, they keep on trying more stuff. The drive to keep on trying more new things even when something that works is already in-hand is what keeps them ahead of the competition.

Great entrepreneurs also apply fast iterations to hiring, whether at the individual employee level or at the board level. This isn’t easy. It requires a lot of work and a huge investment of time and energy.

These entrepreneurs are not afraid to bring lots of new people into the organization, knowing that some will then be around for the long-term. This isn’t as much about matching the right people to the right stage of a startup as it is about working with a lot of different people.

They bring lots of new people into their lives all the time – as advisers, employees, and friends. Some of these become wonderful long-term relationships. Great entrepreneurs never let their environment become stale. They’re always adding interesting new people with new ideas to the mix.

Don’t just try out new product features. Try out new people and approaches to business. Treat your startup as a fluid environment rather than a static one. You'll create a better product -- and a better startup.