Naming the test


 

All of the online tools let us name our tree test, so we can find it later. There’s no special magic here, but we do recommend identifying:

  • The site we’re testing

  • Which variation of the tree we’re testing (if we’re testing more than one)

  • Which revision of the test we’re working on

For example, suppose we’re helping the Acme Supply company reorganize their website. We’re testing their current site structure (to get a baseline score to compare against) and two new trees – one grouped by topic, and the other by audience. So we create 3 tree tests with the following names:

  • Acme current
  • Acme topic
  • Acme audience

 In Chapter 10 - Piloting the test, we’ll see that it’s a good idea to do a dry run of each test, revise it, and launch the second (or third) version. So the list of tests may eventually look like this:

  • Acme current – draft 1
  • Acme current – final
  • Acme topic – draft 1
  • Acme topic – draft 2
  • Acme topic – final
  • Acme audience – draft 1
  • Acme audience – final

 Any name will work, of course, but if we do more tests over time, it does pay to be systematic now so we can make sense of our tests later.

 


Next: Disguising the test address

 


Copyright © 2016 Dave O'Brien

This guide is covered by a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.