Harvard University _BA Module_ SELF-STUDY 101 for A+ RESULTS

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3.3.1 The Shopping Cart A/B Test Now that we have learned how to perform a hypothesis test, let’s return to Amazon and look at a couple examples of A/B testing.   So what we're trying to ... do is we're  trying to improve the experience for our customers.  That's part of our charter, part of our values  is to be the most customer-centric company  in the universe.  So what does it mean to make things better for a customer?  To me as an economist, how I'd view  it is if you buy more of it, that  might be in many, many instances,  an indication that you like it more,  that we've improved things for you.  If you convert more often, that's  an indication that we've improved the experience  for our customers.  We can't go out and ask them questions directly very often  about do you like this versus that.  We have to look at their actions.  So the types of metrics that are the simplest and the most  powerful for us are how much did you spend,  how many units did you buy.  Do we make a distinction between the dollar or euro or yen sales  of product and the units that we sell?  Because we have product that is at so  many different price points from a $20 book to a $1,000 TV  and everything in between?  And so it's helpful for us to look at both the units  that we sell, which is a measure of the engagement  that we have with customers, and the absolute dollar sales,  because of course the impact of buying $1,000  TV may tell us more about your long-term engagement with us  than one purchase of a $20 item.  The graphic that we decided to operate on in this A/B test  is the persistent navigation that we  have at the very top of every amazon.com page.  It includes things like Welcome.  It includes whether you're a Prime member.  It includes our logo.  It includes Help.  It includes a link to your account.  And it includes a little shopping cart icon that  for a long time was static.  It just looks like a shopping cart that you  push through the aisles.  If you click on it, it's the place  that you go to see what you've put into your shopping cart  during that session or some other session.  As long as you remain logged in, we  will persist what's in your cart, of course.  And you can see the things that you've  added yesterday, the day before, and in today's shopping  session.  We find people use it for all kinds of different things.  The team that built thi [Show More]

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