Once a year, by A/B testing case platform Which Test Won gold and silver awards for the best A/B testing of the past year. The awards ceremony is coming up and the case submission deadline has passed.

In 2011, we were the biggest winner (there are +- 35 awards) with (3 awards won with van der Valk and Fonq). In 2012, we were the biggest winner in superlatives: (9 awards won with Univé, Kras, MoneYou and Freo). International awards of which we are very proud. However, this year (the ceremony is at the end of February) we will not win any awards.

Knowledge sharing as a basis for Online Dialogue

Our organization relies on a number of pillars, 1 of which is very important: knowledge. All my colleagues are allowed a maximum of 32 commercial hours per week, leaving 8 hours per week for “knowledge time.” They use this knowledge time to learn more about their specific niche field. Over the years, we have learned that in doing so, there is only 1 way to really get a step further in your development: by sharing your acquired knowledge. You share the combination of knowledge and practice that you master, getting feedback from other professionals and using these fresh perspectives to take the next step.

In doing so, sharing this knowledge (along with many publications) allows our field to grow in maturity in the marketplace. You don't want to have to keep reinventing the wheel. Everyone looks for answers to questions on the Internet. Let's all make sure there are answers there you can use. Offering answers behind a “pay wall” does not contribute to this. You want to keep knowledge freely accessible. This allows us as an organization to do our work at a higher level (and learn from it), because the basic level is getting higher because of the free knowledge.

So why aren't we winning anything this year?

We will not win any awards this year because we simply did not submit any cases.

The organization behind WhichTestWon is a publisher that makes its living from online outreach, training and events. Last year, however, they decided to put free case submissions to WhichTestWon behind a pay wall. It's not a high fee ($75 a year), but they are taking knowledge out of the marketplace by doing so. Yes, anyone can publish their own cases accessible for free (you can't just copy it from WhichTestWon), but that happens far too infrequently.

So the fact that the cases will be behind the pay wall and that you are thus not sharing the knowledge publicly / keeping it accessible goes too much against our important core values. The foundation on which Online Dialogue is built. Without this foundation, we are no longer who we are: a knowledge-driven quality agency. So we will simply publish our own cases in the coming months in our email newsletter, on our website and external platforms such as emerce and marketingfacts. And maybe we will think about establishing our own public A/B testing knowledge library and entice other companies to post their cases there as well... So that their knowledge remains free and openly accessible as well!