About me

Ton has been active in conversion optimization, growth design, and experimentation since the late ‘90s and founded, built, and sold the experimentation agency Online Dialogue. Ton now offers experimentation consulting and coaching. He also hosts The Conferences known as Conversion Hotel, Experimentation Island, and the Experimentation Culture Awards. Ton maintains a list of CRO-related conferences at Conversion Events.

Q&A

How did you first get into testing ideas with experiments? What made you try it out?

“I was building websites in the late ‘90s, early ‘00s, and analyzed server log files to understand click behavior. I began making adjustments to the positioning of affiliate links on these websites to optimize financial impact. This quickly led to JavaScript redirect testing to establish a better experimental setup compared to time series testing. My inspiration came from direct marketing literature and the split testing of coupon codes.”

What's one thing people often get wrong when trying to get different teams to run experiments together?

“Trying to align everything. Too many meetings, not enough risk, not enough pace. Ensure that each team can run its experiments without worrying too much about cooperation, conflicts, and overlaps.”

Can you share one experiment you're really proud of—and what you learned from it?

“Learning from a long series of tests that social proof is a powerful conversion optimization too, but that it can have significant adverse effects when used for products and services that buyers won't brag about at parties. My learning: only remind users about other humans when they would like to share what they are buying with most of those humans.”

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