An evening of experimentation...with Facebook and Conversion.com

Recently we held, what we certainly thought, was our best event yet. An evening of experimentation co-hosted by our friends at Facebook.

We were lucky enough to be joined by Vince Darley (Head of Growth at Deliveroo), Brian Hale (Vice President of Growth Marketing at Facebook) and Denise Moreno (Director of Growth Marketing at Facebook), who shared some incredible insights.

Held at the Facebook offices in Rathbone Square, London, we welcomed a variety of guests from top brands across an array of industries, to hear all about the key principles of experimentation.

Proceedings began with our very own Stephen Pavlovich, CEO and Founder of Conversion.com. If you’re working in the marketing or ecommerce space, it’s likely that you’ve come across the basic principles of experimentation. However, Stephen wanted to explain what experimentation REALLY is.

It’s not as simple as just running a few A/B tests on your site to find out which button colour converts the best, but experimentation, once taken to place where your business has reached an advanced level of maturity, can really begin to answer the wider, more important questions. For example, which product should you launch next? Or how should you structure your commercial model? We believe that experimentation really should be at the heart of every single business.

Next up, we had Vince Darley, Head of Growth at Deliveroo. Vince has had years of experience leading experimentation teams at huge businesses like King and Ocado. He wanted to share some of the knowledge and experience he’s gained over many years at the top with our guests.

Vince Darley, Head of Growth at Deliveroo

Vince really showed the breadth of his knowledge by making sure there was something there for everybody through his ‘Experimentation Three-Course Meal’. He began by sharing some of the basic rules for anybody getting started with experimentation, his experience at King working on applications like the formidable Candy Crush, sharing some of the most important lessons he has learnt including the best way to conduct high impact experimentation. Finally, he drew on his expert knowledge to share some of his most advanced secrets for experimentation, allowing the audience to leave with some indispensable tips around using and interpreting data.

With a tough act to follow, next our audience was treated to a double act by Brian Hale, Vice President of Growth Marketing, and Denise Moreno, Director of Growth Marketing at Facebook.

Brian Hale, Vice President of Growth Marketing at Facebook

They discussed five key issues around creating a growth team and how experimentation should inform the process and ways of working. It was incredible for our audience to hear about how one of the most iconic growth teams in the world was formed. They were provided with actionable insight that will help them when they try to drive the expansion of their own internal teams. Finally, they shared some of their own experimentation principles from years of experience, and some real life examples from Facebook around testing on messenger and ads from some of the earliest stages of the platform.

Alongside some fantastic content from our speakers, the evening also marked the launch of our experimentation principles project. Inspired by the simple elegance of the UK government design principles, we have decided to collate our 11 years experience at Conversion.com, and define a set of core experimentation principles. They tackle the simple mistakes, misconceptions and misinterpretations that organizations make, that limit the impact, effectiveness and adoption of experimentation.

Our 9 key principles of experimentation

Every member of the audience received a copy of these to help elevate their experimentation program. Luckily, this wasn’t limited to our guests, and you too can elevate your program. If you’d like to download a copy of the key principles you should be considering, with input from our friends at Facebook, Just Eat, Booking.com and Microsoft, then download your copy here today.

If you’d like to hear more about how you can use experimentation to drive growth in your business, then get in touch.

Keep an eye on our events page to make sure you don’t miss out.