UX experiments / Friction
Friction · A/B test
Pages or infinite scroll? Etsy's search results experiment
Search results: pages, or infinite scroll? Which led to more purchases from search?
Make your call. Which version won, and why? Decide before you open the result. Guessing first is what trains your judgment.
Made your call? See the result
Infinite scroll lost: fewer clicks, fewer favorites, fewer purchases from search.
What happened
The team spent a month hunting for bugs before accepting the result. Shoppers didn't buy less overall; they stopped finding items through search.
Why it worked
The feature assumed shoppers wanted more and faster results. They didn't. The team had also built the whole thing before testing its assumptions.
The takeaway
Test the assumption behind a feature before you build the feature.
Source
- Dan McKinley · Design for Continuous Experimentation (mcfunley.com)
More experiments to call
Practice the call
Call experiments like these every day.
Irreplaceable gives you a few real experiments a day to call before you see the result, and tracks how your judgment improves. Start with a free baseline: 12 decisions, about 12 minutes.