Delivering results, moving forward, taking steps, taking action. In our work, we are busy every day delivering added value to customers, colleagues, the organization, the community or ourselves. It is important to be convincing and to stand for what you want to achieve. Sometimes you believe in it so much that you fall into a trap because you can no longer view your idea objectively. Recently I heard someone say about an A/B test: “I'll eat my shoe if it doesn't work.”. Good to experience enthusiasm and conviction, but at the same time an alarm bell went off for me.

Through experimentation, it has become increasingly easier to identify what works and what doesn't. But in addition to data-driven behavioral insights, there are also countless assumptions about how customers and visitors arrive at purchases or actions. Often I hear comments like: “our customers aren't waiting for that”, “customers only look at price” or “we should do it just like our competitors” come by. It is important to properly substantiate these types of assumptions.

There are 3 pitfalls that I encounter (a lot) in practice, which I share in this article: 

• Confirmation bias
• Groupthink
• Too much focus on success 

“I'm eating my shoe.”

Confirmation bias is the tendency of people to pay more attention and value information that confirms their own ideas or hypotheses. At the same time, there is a tendency to pay less attention to information that contradicts one's own ideas. Unconsciously, we ignore or distort information so that it fits our ideas and viewpoints. 

A high degree of emotional involvement or deep-seated biases affect your confirmation bias. Everyone naturally hopes to have the right idea and hypothesis. This also applies to the A/B test example, because this person believes in the idea in advance, he finds reasons/evidence for the idea more salient and convincing than reasons/evidence against the idea.

For example, pitfalls with confirmation bias are that you start looking for connections that are not there, thinking from your own perspective and testing without using all the information objectively.

Groupthink

A psychosocial phenomenon in which a group of competent individuals is influenced by group processes in such a way that the quality of group decisions is reduced. It occurs when group members pay primary attention to maintaining consensus and unanimity in a decision-making process rather than critical consideration of the facts. If you are working as a team on digital improvements or experiments, it is helpful to continue to give ideas separately and prioritize them based on weighting factors so that you are not influenced by what your teammate suggests. In this way, group decisions can remain without being influenced by assumptions. 

Too much focus on success (preventing failure)

I see this pitfall reflected in practice in two ways:

• In experimentation, you are going to make many changes in a very short period of time. During the process of experimentation, you may well make mistakes. 
• When you experiment, there are also times when the results are negative or there is no effect. While these can be very valuable learnings for follow-up experiments, they are usually not included or do not get the attention they deserve because they are not winners. 

It is important to share insights with each other to learn from them, so even if it is negative. The moment you focus only on success, you foster a static mindset. Here the team is only focused on perform, whereas when experimenting you also want to focus on developing and learning (a growth mindset). Carol Dweck did years of research out of Stanford and wrote an interesting book about it: Mindset. 

How do you avoid these pitfalls?

• Be aware that everyone is susceptible to biases and pitfalls.
• Accept that you can be wrong and learn to live with this. This can be tricky, but you often have to be wrong to often be right when it comes to conversion optimization.
• Look for a different perspective. Ask other people on your team for their ideas.
• Break from routine and seek new insights using data-driven research.
• Use data and insights to get a picture of what really moves customers.
• Experiment and research to prove yourself wrong
• Be sure to recognize your own pitfalls and talk about them with each other.
• Focus on growth mindset where it is not only about performing but also about developing and learning.

And did the person have to eat his shoe? Yes, his conviction was not confirmed in the experiment, so he did indeed have to eat his shoe (we gave him a chocolate shoe).