Running It: Pre-Launch Review | A/B Testing for Product Managers

A/B Testing for Product Managers

The Four Deaths

What a Test Can and Cannot Tell You

Why "Let's Just Test It" Is Often Wrong

The Shape of a Good Test

What This Course Covers

The Three Questions

When to Just Ship It

Test, or Go and Talk to Someone?

Exercise 1: Triage Your Test Ideas

Why "We Think This Will Improve Conversion" Isn't One

The Four-Part Hypothesis

Saying in Advance What Would Make You Wrong

One Change or Several?

Exercise 2: Write a Real Hypothesis

The Four Numbers

The Calculation, Worked Through

Why Most Tests Are Too Small

The Weekly Cycle Rule

Exercise 4: Do the Arithmetic Before You Build

Before You Turn It On

What to Check on Day Two

The Six Things That Invalidate a Running Test

Exercise 5: Set Up Properly

What "Significant" Actually Means

Effect Size and the Range

The Flat Result

When the Result Contradicts What You Believed

Exercise 6: Read a Result Properly

Winning Isn't the Same as Worth Shipping

Exercise 7: Decide and Record

Slicing Until Something Wins

Novelty and Primacy

Contamination, Mismatch and Survivorship

Exercise 8: Audit Your Own Results

Five Situations Where Testing Won't Help

What to Do With Too Little Traffic

Knowing When to Stop

Exercise 9: Diagnose Your Testing Programme

Final Project: Design, Run and Report One Real Test

Before You Build: Deciding Whether to Test

Before You Build: Writing and Stress-Testing a Hypothesis

Before You Build: Choosing Your Metrics

Before You Build: Sample Size and Duration

Running It: Pre-Launch Review

Reading It: Reading a Result Honestly

Reading It: Auditing for the Six Lies

Afterwards: The Test Readout

Checking Yourself: Is Testing Right for Your Situation?

Glossary: Words Explained

Lesson 6

Running It: Pre-Launch Review

Review my A/B test setup and find what I've missed. THE TEST: [both variants]. PRIMARY

METRIC: [and how tracked]. GUARDRAILS: [list]. DURATION: [weeks and the sample size

behind it]. AUDIENCE: [included and excluded]. WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING: [other tests,

campaigns, releases in this window]. Tell me: anything that could produce unusable data;

specific ways my tracking could be wrong in one variant but not the other; whether

anything in this window could contaminate the result; who to tell before starting and

what to tell each of them; and what to check on day two versus what to deliberately not

look at.