Olivia: I'm going to say something that might get me fired from a marketing job. Your website is probably broken. Not technically, but it’s losing you money every second. And the person with the most power in your company is likely the one breaking it. Jackson: Whoa, okay, starting with a bold claim! That's a spicy take for a Tuesday morning. Where is this coming from? Are you trying to get us cancelled by every CEO listening? Olivia: It comes from the core message of a fantastic book, You Should Test That! by Chris Goward. What's fascinating is that Goward was a true pioneer in this field. He founded one of the first agencies dedicated to conversion optimization back when most of the industry was just focused on winning design awards, not getting clients actual results. Jackson: Ah, so he was focused on the money, not just the pretty pictures. I can respect that. Olivia: Exactly. And he kicks off his argument with this incredible, and frankly hilarious, story that perfectly illustrates my opening claim. It involves a senior executive, a homepage, and a single, giant, red button. Jackson: I'm already hooked. This sounds like a corporate disaster story, which is my favorite genre.

Olivia: It’s a classic. So, picture this: over a decade ago, a senior executive at a big company has a flash of genius. He decides their product is so amazing, so self-evidently great, that the company homepage is just getting in the way. All the text, the images, the testimonials—it's all clutter. Jackson: Okay, I can see the logic, in a very simplified, egocentric kind of way. What was his grand solution? Olivia: His solution was to delete everything on the homepage and replace it with a single, giant, red button that just said "Start Now." No explanation, no context. Just a button. He was convinced it would be a revolutionary success. Jackson: Oh, I love this guy. He’s got confidence, I’ll give him that. So what happened? Did they do it? Olivia: Well, a junior employee—who was probably terrified—was tasked with evaluating the idea. Instead of just saying "no" to the big boss, he cleverly proposed they test it. They set up a simple A/B test: half the website visitors saw the original homepage, and the other half saw the executive's masterpiece—the giant red button page. Jackson: The ultimate showdown. The old guard versus the new. What did the data say? Olivia: The data was brutal. The giant red button page performed significantly worse. It was a total flop. The test proved, with cold, hard numbers, that the executive's "brilliant" idea was, in fact, a terrible one. Jackson: That is beautiful. I feel like every company has a 'giant red button' story. An idea from on high that everyone knows is bad, but nobody has the power or the data to fight it. Olivia: You've just perfectly described what Goward calls the 'HiPPO'—the Highest-Paid Person's Opinion. It's one of the most dangerous things in business. Decisions get made based on authority or gut feeling, not on what customers actually want. And it’s why so many websites underperform. It’s not just HiPPOs, either. It’s also blindly following so-called 'best practices.' Jackson: What do you mean? Like those rotating carousels you see on every other homepage? Olivia: Exactly! Goward points out that those things are often terrible for conversions. A visitor sees something interesting, and poof, it slides away before they can click. It creates frustration, not sales. But companies do it because they see their competitors doing it. They're copying each other's mistakes. Jackson: Okay, but you can't test everything. Isn't there some value in experience and intuition? You can't just be a robot analyzing spreadsheets all day. Olivia: That's the perfect question, because it's not about abandoning intuition. It's about validating it. The whole point of "You Should Test That!" is to use your experience to form a hypothesis—an educated guess—and then let your customers tell you if you're right. The goal is to replace "I think" with "I know, because the data shows..." Jackson: So it’s less about being a robot and more about being a detective. You have a hunch, but you need to find the evidence to prove it. Olivia: Precisely. And that's where it gets really interesting. Because to be a good detective, you need a framework for finding clues. You can't just test random things. You need a system.

Olivia: And that's the book's biggest contribution. Goward gives us a framework for smart, targeted testing. It’s called the LIFT Model. It’s a way to analyze any webpage and diagnose why it’s not working. Jackson: Okay, hit me with it. But please, no boring acronyms. My brain is already at capacity for corporate jargon. Olivia: I promise. It’s built on six factors that influence a customer's decision. On one side, you have the things that drive conversion: the Value Proposition, Relevance, and Clarity. On the other side, you have the things that inhibit conversion: Anxiety, Distraction, and Urgency. Jackson: Hold on, that's a lot of terms. To me, it sounds like a marble jar. You're trying to fill a jar with marbles to get a customer to say yes. Olivia: A marble jar? I like it. Go on. Jackson: Well, your Value Proposition—how good your offer is—is the size of the marbles. Big, valuable offer, big marbles. Then, Clarity and Relevance are the marbles you're adding to the jar. Is your message clear? Is it relevant to me? If so, you're adding marbles. But Anxiety and Distraction are like holes in the bottom of the jar. Am I worried about giving you my credit card? That's a hole. Is your page full of blinking ads? That's another hole. Marbles are leaking out. Olivia: Jackson, that's a brilliant analogy! And Urgency is the person shaking the jar, trying to get the marbles to settle faster. Goward's entire model is about adding more marbles and plugging the holes. Jackson: See? No jargon needed. Just marbles. So how does this work in the real world? Give me a marble jar story. Olivia: Perfect example. Electronic Arts wanted to get more people to register their game, The Sims 3. The original page gave players a choice: register and get 1,000 "SimPoints" to spend on anything in the game store. It was a decent offer. Jackson: Sounds okay. A bit generic, but fine. So they were adding some medium-sized marbles to the jar. Olivia: Right. But they tested it against a different value proposition. The new version offered one specific, tangible thing: "Register now and get a FREE, exclusive town to download." It was the same value in dollars, but it was concrete. Jackson: Ah, so instead of a handful of generic marbles, they offered one giant, shiny, "exclusive town" marble. Olivia: Exactly! And the results were staggering. The "Free Town" offer got a 128 percent lift in game registrations. It doubled their conversion rate. They didn't change the cost; they just changed the clarity and relevance of the value proposition. Jackson: Wow. And what about plugging the holes? The anxiety and distraction? Olivia: Let's look at the enterprise software giant, SAP. They had a landing page for a free trial of their software. It was a bit cluttered, the call-to-action was weak, and it wasn't immediately clear what to do. There were too many distractions—too many holes in the marble jar. Jackson: So marbles were leaking out all over the place. Olivia: They were. So WiderFunnel, Goward's company, tested a new version. They simplified the layout, used a big, clear image, and most importantly, they added a massive, unmissable, bright orange button. They plugged the 'Distraction' hole and improved 'Clarity' dramatically. Jackson: Let me guess, it worked. Olivia: It lifted lead generation by 32.5 percent. That's a huge number for a company like SAP. It’s a perfect example of how simple changes, guided by a framework, can produce massive results. It's not about magic; it's about systematically adding the right marbles and plugging the biggest holes. Jackson: It's funny, now that you say it, I'm thinking about Amazon's "Buy Now" button. It's huge, it's orange, it's always in the same place. They've clearly figured out their marble jar. Olivia: They've been testing that marble jar for over two decades. And that brings up an interesting point. Some critics of this approach say it can feel a bit... sterile. Google's former lead designer famously quit because he got tired of the team testing 41 different shades of blue to see which one converted best. He felt it stifled creativity. Jackson: I can see that. At what point does testing just become painting by numbers? And is this whole book just a big sales pitch for Goward's agency? The case studies are all from his clients. Olivia: That's a fair critique, and some readers have pointed that out. But I think Goward's response would be that the principles are universal. The LIFT model isn't proprietary knowledge; it's a diagnostic tool anyone can use. And he's not saying design and creativity don't matter. He's saying the best creative ideas are the ones that are proven to work.

Jackson: So, when we boil it all down, what's the one thing we should take away from this? Is the message just 'test more'? Olivia: I think it's more profound than that. The real insight from Goward's work is that testing isn't just a marketing tactic; it's a strategic tool for empathy. You're not just trying to get a click or a sale. You're using data to understand your customer's mind—their hopes, their fears, their confusion. Jackson: So a failed test isn't a failure. It's a lesson. Olivia: Exactly. Every test that fails is just as valuable as one that wins, because it teaches you something you didn't know about who you're talking to. It stops you from making decisions based on your own biases, or your boss's biases, and forces you to listen to the only opinion that actually matters: the customer's. Jackson: I like that. So the first step isn't to go out and buy expensive testing software. It's to ask a simple question: 'What's our company's 'giant red button' idea?' What's the one core assumption that everyone believes is true, but has never actually been proven? Olivia: That's the perfect starting point. Find your HiPPO's favorite idea and put it to the test. And we'd love to hear from our listeners. What's the biggest 'HiPPO' decision you've ever seen? Share your stories with the Aibrary community on our social channels. We'd love to hear them. Jackson: I have a feeling we're going to get some good ones. This has been eye-opening. Olivia: This is Aibrary, signing off.