Chapter 8 : strategy 4

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4. Test More and Learn From the Results

It's remarkable how many organizations don't test enough because their people don't have enough time. People have hypotheses about what drives value long term, sure, but they're too heads-down on their day-to-day work to act on them. This can negate the impact of even the most successful ecommerce strategies.

From their teams, executives should ask for (and incentivize) more than just hypotheses. Ask for and collect:

The hypothesis

The observed data

How to test the hypothesis

What the company would do differently if the hypothesis is true.

From there, says Hoyne, executives have a list of viable hypotheses to work with. At this point, it's their responsibility to find and alleviate the bottlenecks preventing these tests from being carried out.

"Most retailers run three to four tests a quarter," he says. "If you can find a way to generate six, you've doubled the rate of innovation."

Beyond increasing their volume of quality tests, the top ecommerce companies do two other important things:

Run tests side by side

Go back and learn from the tests, even those that fail to identify potential success factors to test for in the future.