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by eagsalazar2 4674 days ago
People's stated preferences may be totally uncorrelated with what Yahoo really cares about which is how their logo affects people's use of Yahoo properties vs their competitors.

So while I agree with the statement "test don't guess" wholeheartedly, it isn't clear that what was tested matters or that the results are actionable. People often respond to things they would subjectively describe as ugly in very positive ways wrt key conversions such as signups, sharing, long term engagement.

1 comments

In general test behavior, not opinions if you can. People lie to themselves and pollsters constantly. This is an awesome article about how the Obama campaign used testing to design their email campaign:

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-11-29/the-science-...

Big takeaway: you have no idea what is going to work, measure behavior not opinions.