Snap Cuts 20% of Employees and Restructures

The maker of Snapchat discontinued some of its products and appointed a chief operating officer, amid financial struggles.

BY KALLEY HUANG | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

Xi Jinping’s Vision for Tech Self-Reliance in China Runs Into Reality

After heavy national investment in semiconductors to break a dependence on global chips, Mr. Xi seems unhappy with the results.

BY LI YUAN | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

QAnon Accounts Found a Home, and Trump’s Support, on Truth Social

Researchers identified 88 users promoting the conspiracy theory on Donald Trump’s platform, and said he had reposted messages 65 times.

BY TIFFANY HSU | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

What Is ‘the Merge’?

Here’s what to know about a major software upgrade to Ethereum, the most popular crypto platform.

BY DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

We Need to Talk About How Good A.I. Is Getting

We’re in a golden age of progress in artificial intelligence. It’s time to start taking its potential and risks seriously.

By KEVIN ROOSE | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

To Fight Election Falsehoods, Social Media Companies Ready a Familiar Playbook

Platforms like TikTok and Facebook are planning anti-misinformation strategies that resemble those used in 2020.

BY STUART A. THOMPSON | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

TikTok Browser Can Track Users’ Keystrokes, According to New Research

In the web browser used within the TikTok app, supplementary code lets the company track every character typed by users. The company said the capability was for troubleshooting.

BY PAUL MOZUR, RYAN MAC AND CHANG CHE | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

The Faded but Winning Pandemic Star

Sales are down, but there is no need to pity the Chromebook.

BY SHIRA OVIDE | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

Lyft Unveils Self-Driving Car Service in Las Vegas (With Caveats)

The company joins several others that are introducing self-driving services — but the cars often have drivers or are otherwise limited in their autonomy.

BY CADE METZ | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

Driverless Cars Shouldn’t Be a Race

Sometimes it’s better to be safe than first.

By SHIRA OVIDE | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

Take Your Landing Page Testing to the Next Level with Unbounce

A/B testing is the key to optimizing your marketing campaigns.

If you’re not testing your landing pages as a marketer, you’re wasting time and energy. After all, understanding how your assets are working or not working is the key to optimizing your efforts. And, as a seasoned marketer, you have always heard from industry leaders that A/B testing is essential to your strategy.

However, testing demands time, high volumes of traffic, or CRO expertise that you might not have. This means a very tall task for smaller marketing teams struggling to stay on top of their marketing load. With that said, let’s look at what A/B testing can look like.

A typical landing page converting at 5% might see 50 visitors a day. To see a lift of 20% to your conversion rate in these circumstances, you’d have to run an A/B test for 304 days (to reach 95% significance, according to Unbounce’s A/B test duration calculator).

Now, let’s be honest, waiting for almost a year for a test is not viable, especially since these tests don’t always produce useable insights. Plus, there’s a lot that happens while you wait for the results. Time-sensitive campaigns (like that big Black Friday sale) begin to wither before you can optimize them, offers can expire, and you’re potentially delaying decisions you could or should be making.

What other options do marketers have?

Firstly, it needs to be said that A/B testing is not something to be rid of entirely. There is plenty of evidence that shows A/B testing does work by letting you squeeze more conversions from your existing assets and is a great tool for confirming an informed hypothesis. It’s just not a one-size-fits-all approach.

As the #1 landing page and AI copywriting platform, Unbounce, stands behind A/B testing and offers many solutions to help. However, they also know optimizing only works under the right circumstances and with the right goals. That’s why they have taught a machine to optimize your landing pages for you.

Powered by AI, Smart Traffic automatically optimizes your landing pages by sending each and every visitor to a page variant where they’re most likely to convert. It avoids the problem of optimizing for the average visitor with a “one-size-fits-all” champion. It’s super easy to use and starts to optimize quickly after as few as 50 visits.

Here’s how it works:

1. You create landing page variants.

2. Set a conversion goal, then turn on Smart Traffic.

3. Smart Traffic optimizes automatically.

4. See results.

   
   

How exactly it works to optimize your landing page is a little more high-tech. Let’s do a mini-dive into how Smart Traffic optimizes your landing pages so easily.

• Smart Traffic knocks down the barriers to entry. You don’t need an unrealistic amount of visitors to start seeing results. And, unlike traditional A/B testing, there’s no lengthy exploration phase in which you’re sending 50% of your traffic to the eventual loser (potentially missing out on yet more conversions). 

• Smart Traffic matches visitors with the variant most likely to convert. Instead of optimizing for the average person, Smart Traffic starts matching each and every visitor to the landing page variant that’s right for them, based on the unique attributes that set them apart from the crowd. 

• Smart Traffic frees you to do great marketing. Smart Traffic’s patent-pending machine learning algorithm puts the complexity back where it belongs: behind the scenes by crunching data and dynamically matching visitors to variants. But Smart Traffic has value beyond the technology: it frees you to do things that machine learning algorithms simply can’t—like creating innovative campaigns and strategies, smarter and more engaging content, and more compelling visitor experiences. 

  
  

If you feel like your testing is stuck and not actually helping, head to Unbounce and make it work for you. Their Smart Traffic solution is here to help you get more conversions with less guessing and less testing.

Try Unbounce for Free

See also: 

Get Social with Unbounce

Grow Your Agency with Conversion Intelligence

Boost Your Conversion Rates with AI-Powered Optimization for 2022

Turning Browsers into Buyers: See How Smart Builder Gets You More Conversions

This page contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, I may earn an affiliate commission. Read the full Disclosure statement for more information.

Former Twitter Employee Convicted of Charges Related to Spying for Saudis

A federal jury in San Francisco deliberated for nearly three days before convicting him on six charges while acquitting him on five others in the two-week trial.

BY KALLEY HUANG AND KATE CONGER | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

Coinbase Reports 63 Percent Drop in Revenue Amid Industry Slump

The cryptocurrency exchange lost more than $1 billion in the second quarter.

BY DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

Travel the World in an App

But be careful: Flight-tracking technology can be addictive.

By SHIRA OVIDE | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

How Russia Took Over Ukraine’s Internet in Occupied Territories

Diverting traffic through Russian networks makes it easier to censor, surveil and digitally wall off the invaded population.

BY ADAM SATARIANO AND SCOTT REINHARD | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

A.I. Is Not Sentient. Why Do People Say It Is?

Robots can’t think or feel, despite what the researchers who build them want to believe.

By STUART A. THOMPSON | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

Arizona Republicans exaggerate voting issues to sow fresh doubt about elections.

Officials said there was no evidence of widespread fraud.

BY STUART A. THOMPSON | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

America’s Chinese Tech Ban Didn’t Stick

Lessons from how the U.S. (poorly) handled Chinese phone and internet technology.

BY SHIRA OVIDE | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

You, Too, Can Strike It Rich on YouTube!

A cottage industry is persuading people to spend thousands to create video businesses on YouTube. Disclaimer: It is harder than it looks.

BY NICO GRANT | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure

The Crypto Market Crashed. They’re Still Buying Bitcoin.

Hard-core Bitcoin evangelists are making the case that Bitcoin differs from the unstable crypto projects that sent the market into a tailspin.

BY DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY | NYTimes Technology | Disclosure