Seven rules of thumb for web site experimenters

Abstract

Web site owners, from small web sites to the largest properties that include Amazon, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, and Yahoo, attempt to improve their web sites, optimizing for criteria ranging from repeat usage, time on site, to revenue. Having been involved in running thousands of controlled experiments at Amazon, Booking.com, LinkedIn, and multiple Microsoft properties, we share seven rules of thumb for experimenters, which we have generalized from these experiments and their results. These are principles that we believe have broad applicability in web optimization and analytics outside of controlled experiments, yet they are not provably correct, and in some cases exceptions are known.