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Note: I did not A/B test the experiment covered in the Mixpanel article. I did just release an A/B testing framework (A/Bingo) today. You can find it here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=764508

1) I run tests until I get statistically significant results. How long that takes is outside the scope of this comment, except to say that if you're testing something with a high conversion rate and testing two very different alternatives you can get significant results in ~250 users or so. This lets me do very rapid iterating. Changes in my core interaction can be A/B tested in under a week, which works well for me (I do most development on weekends).

2) I run lots of tests in parallel. For why that is not as bad an idea as you might think it is, see the A/Bingo FAQ.

3) That is a core design consideration for A/Bingo. I obsessively track users to make sure they always get the same alternative. A/Bingo is the only Rails A/B testing framework that does this, to my knowledge.



It's also easy to test things with very low conversion rates. The worst conversion rate to have in terms of required sample size is 50%.




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