Ruben de Boer posts on LinkedIn with great regularity. He finds it fun, educational and tries to help people further with his updates.
The cool thing is that LinkedIn provides a lot of data insight. So, among other things, we can see which topics generated the most buzz in the first part of the year 2023. In this article, he highlights 5 high-profile topics.

Trending CRO topic #1: Let's stop calling our A/B tests ‘losers’

When our control performs significantly better than our variant(s), we tend to call our test a loser. However, there are many things wrong with this!

• A loser has a very negative connotation and indicates a bad experiment. But you tested something instead of implementing it immediately. So it can never be negative.
• Because it has a negative connotation, we are less likely to share this result with the organization. While everyone can learn a lot from it.
• Calling it a loser in no way contributes to broadening the scope and understanding of experimentation in the organization. After all, experimentation is not just about finding winners. It is also about mitigating risks.
• When the control outperforms your variant(s), you've found something that impacts user behavior and your KPIs. In most cases, that's much more valuable than an ‘inconclusive’ experiment. So how can it be a loser?

We should value an experiment in which the control outperforms the variants as something good.

• You tested it instead of implementing it.
• So you avoided a negative impact on your KPIs and revenue.
• You also avoided a negative effect on the user experience.
• You've found an element that influences user behavior. Thus, you have learned something valuable that you can build on.

Instead of calling it a loser, let's call it an ‘avoided loss.

Trending CRO topic #2: 5 indispensable Airtable automations

Many CRO specialists track the process, progress and insights in Airtable. Automations make it very easy to automate recurring work. Five essential automations for CRO specialists are:

• Automated email or Slack message when you put an experiment live.
• Automated cleanup of inactive experiments.
• Automated creation of an experiment record when you start testing a test idea.
• Semi-automated analysis of your prioritization model.
• Automated queries for improving your A/B testing insights.

Interested in these Automations? The LinkedIn post includes a slider explaining step-by-step how to set this up in Airtable.

Trending CRO topic #3: The benefits of a one-person CRO team

In many organizations, experimentation has become a team effort. However, the journey often begins with one passionate CRO specialist wearing many hats: from data analysis to designer, from hypothesis creation to test development.

The speed and quality of experiments increases dramatically with a multidisciplinary team. It leads to much better results. However, the phase when you are a one-person CRO team can be a valuable learning curve for your future.

Knowing everything (a little) about the CRO process gives you a unique perspective. It can help you lead CRO teams effectively in the future.

Looking back on my early career days as the solo CRO specialist in an organization, I can say that those experiences were fun and highly educational. To this day, I am still reaping the benefits of the lessons I learned then.

So if you are a one-man CRO team, cherish the moment and learn a lot. You'll reap the benefits in the future.

Trending CRO topic #4: The future of CRO

There are several theories about the future of CRO. Here's my take, based on things happening in more mature markets.

The CRO team/silo will die and excel elsewhere

And that is just as well, because we should work more closely with other teams to make a greater impact with our unique mindset and skills. CRO/experiments continues in three teams.

Marketing experiments
There will be experimentation throughout the customer journey. A CRO specialist/lead is definitely a possibility on this team. The CRO specialist will be responsible for experimentation and personalization to increase conversion rates. This specialist must have knowledge of personalization, AI and data connections and work closely with marketers, copywriters, designers, data scientists and data engineers.

Experimentation in Product Discovery

Product Discovery is the process that helps product teams understand real user problems and find the best solution to solve them. In this team is A/B testing one of many methods for validating solutions, assumptions and business ideas. Most other methods are related to user research. A job as a CRO specialist is unlikely to exist on this team (the name CRO doesn't make sense here). However, the team probably needs a validation/research specialist.

Experimentation in Product Delivery

In the delivery track, experiments will be fully integrated into the technical pipeline and possibly automated, meaning that every update made by the delivery teams will be an ‘experiment. An ’experiment engineer‘ must have a lot of technical knowledge to build, maintain and update the experiment system.

In short, the CRO team/silo dies, but elsewhere in the organization, experimentation excels. (Possibly there will be a fourth team - an optimization team that will optimize existing features after the discovery and delivery teams have completed their work on them.)

Trending CRO topic #5: Chat-GPT4 for better website copy

(Small note: the option to connect chatGPT to the Internet is, as I write this, temporarily unavailable).

Need help improving your web copy? Use Chat-GPT4 to scan your website!

In the settings, give Chat-GPT4 access to the Internet. Then create a new chat, and select Chat-GPT4 and ‘Browse with Bing. Let's get started!

The first prompt will allow you to understand the tone of your website: ‘Act as a world-class conversion copywriter. Analyze the tone of voice on this webpage: [URL].’ This forms the basis for creating conversion-optimized text.

Now it's time to improve your writing. Try these prompts:

For jargon detection: ‘Analyze the web page [URL]. Detect all sentences with jargon, and provide an alternative in the tone of voice of the web page. Display it in a table. In the first column, display the sentence or paragraph containing jargon. In the second column, display the alternative text.’

For readability: ‘Analyze the webpage [URL]. Detect all sentences that are hard to read for an average visitor and provide an alternative in the tone of voice of the web page. Display it in a table. In the first column, display the sentence or paragraph containing jargon. In the second column, display the alternative text.’

For an adaptation of features into benefits: ‘Analyze the webpage [URL]. Rewrite feature descriptions into benefits for the end user. Display it in a table. In the first column, display the sentence or paragraph containing feature descriptions. In the second column, display the alternative text.’

These AI-driven insights can provide inspiration for your next copy test!

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The actual No. 2: Experimentation Elite Awards

The post that actually ranks number two (but contributes less content) is my post about winning three Experimentation Elite awards:

• Personally, I won the ‘Practitioner of the Year award.’
• We won the Agency Team of the Year award for our work at DPG Media.
• Ton Wesseling (founder of Online Dialogue) won the ‘Legend of the Year award.’

Sanne wrote a blog about Experimentation Elite 2023.

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