It Takes a Testing Village

Test­ing is inher­ently col­lab­o­ra­tive. It feeds off the behav­iors of your vis­i­tors, but it also requires coor­di­na­tion among mul­ti­ple groups for suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion, includ­ing mar­ket­ing, cre­ative, and devel­op­ment. Those who begin test­ing for the first time can truly ben­e­fit from the expe­ri­ences of those who went before them. So it begs the ques­tion — why isn’t there more col­lab­o­ra­tion going on out there?

I could hypoth­e­size that it’s because test­ing is still a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage at this point. I cer­tainly have some clients who feel this way and are very pro­tec­tive of their test designs and results. But I believe they’re in the minority.

The best con­ver­sa­tion I’ve read about test­ing in the last year took place in Avinash Kaushik’s blog com­ments recently. And while I love all the responses the post stirred up, I can’t help think­ing that there’s got to be a bet­ter place to keep the con­ver­sa­tion going.

Toward that end, I’ve cre­ated a group focused on web opti­miza­tion where I’m hop­ing a lot more col­lab­o­ra­tion will take place. This is a group for mar­keters inter­ested in or cur­rently test­ing and opti­miz­ing their sites today, regard­less of plat­form or ven­dor. I invite com­pa­nies, agen­cies, and ven­dors to join the conversation.

I’ll most likely be cre­at­ing dis­cus­sions there around best prac­tices and adding a lot of the ques­tions I com­monly get around test­ing. Even though it’s fun to blog here, I get a lit­tle lonely bang­ing around on my lap­top alone. I’d much rather get more feed­back from those of you on the front line and I’m hop­ing we can all find ways to help each other as the test­ing com­mu­nity con­tin­ues to grow.

I encour­age any­body inter­ested in test­ing and opti­miza­tion to join the group today and par­tic­i­pate! Par­tic­i­pa­tion is key.

Group: http://​groups​.google​.com/​g​r​o​u​p​/​w​e​b​o​p​t​i​m​i​z​a​t​ion