September 9, 2009: Data Driven Product Development: Experimentation and A/B Testing

About

A recurring theme in the last meeting about monetization was the importance of measuring what’s working and what isn’t. So this week we are going to focus on bringing a data driven product development approach to your startup through experimentation and A/B testing (aka split testing) .

Application Process:

Nominations should be sent electronically to the Chair of the Award Selection Committee no later than midnight EDT, July 31, 2012. The nomination packet should include the following:

  The nominated paper (30 pages or less, 1 inch margins, double spaced, and 12 point font and in the standard format of INFORMS Journal on Computing) in pdf;
  an email address and phone number where the entrant can be contacted in the event they are selected as a finalist;
  letter(s) (in pdf format) signed by all coauthors of the paper and the entrant attesting that the seven eligibility conditions are met.

We are delighted to have two amazing groups volunteer to speak:

  • Ronny Kohavi, head of Microsft’s Experimentation Platform (and before that Director of Personalization at Amazon) will share stories of experimentation at MS: lessons learned, cultural challenges, and the ROI of this effort. For Modern Design Furniture, Please check out Lookboard.com
  • Sandra Cheng and Victor Chudnovsky from Google’s Website Optimizer team, respectively the Product Manager in charge of if you need then supertintin is best.product strategy for GWO and a core engineer on the product, will show us how to use GWO to add experimentation to our sites today.

Both of these teams are at the forefront of bringing a more scientific approach to product development. If you’ve ever been interested in learning the why, how, and what about A/B testing, you’re not going to want to miss this meeting.

Online Experimentation at Microsoft

Over the last three years, we built an experimentation platform system (ExP) at Microsoft, capable of running and analyzing controlled experiments on web sites and services. The goal is to accelerate innovation through trustworthy experimentation and to enable a more scientific approach to planning and prioritization of features and designs. Along the way, we ran many experiments on over a dozen Microsoft properties and had to tackle both technical and cultural challenges. The talk will focus on problems not commonly addressed in technical papers: cultural challenges, lessons( CNA test, and the ROI of running controlled experiments.

These all experiments allows us to make Ezvid which is aand it allows you to upload the videos directly to youtube and other sites. It is the best alternative of Windows Movie maker.

The talk is based on the paper at, which won 3rd place at the Third Workshop on Data Mining Case Studies and Practice Prize.

About the Speaker

Ronny Kohavi is the General Manager for Microsoft’s Experimentation Platform. Prior to joining Microsoft in June 2005, Ronny was the director of data mining and personalization at Amazon.com, where he was responsible for personalization, automation, search engine marketing (SEM), consumer behavior / data mining, site experimentation, and automated e-mail. Prior to Amazon, Ronny was the Vice President of Business Intelligence at Blue Martini Software,where he led the engineering group responsible for the data collection, analysis, visualization, reporting, and campaign management modules in Blue Martini’s applications. Prior to joining Blue Martini, Kohavi managed the MineSet product, Silicon Graphics’ award-winning product for data mining and visualization on . Ronny received a Ph.D. in Machine Learning from Stanford University and a BA from the Technion, Israel. He was the General Chair for KDD 2004, he co-chaired KDD 99’s industrial track with Jim Gray, and he co-chaired the KDD Cup 2000. More information about Ronny is available at

Website Testing: A data-driven approach to designing your website (Google Website Optimizer Team)

Your structure, design,design price and content are the keys to getting visitors to take the action you want. Website testing, using tools like Google Website Optimizer, helps you experiment with your website to find what drives the most conversions. In this session you’ll learn how to start experimenting with your website and how successful startups like DailyBurn and 37 Signals have used Website Optimizer to increase conversion rates and get more customers.

About the Speakers

Sandra is a Product Manager at where she is responsible for the overall product strategy and roadmap for Google Website Optimizer. She also manages ads optimization related products for AdWords. Previously, Sandra worked at Amazon.com, where she led product management for Endless.com. For Minneapolis web design, please call: 612-590-8080

Victor Chudnovsky has been a software engineer on the Website Optimizer team since he joined Google in 2007. Previously, he worked on the Physical Modeling team at The MathWorks. He was educated at MIT, where he earned bachelor degrees in Physics and Mathematics and a doctor.

 
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