3 Growth Tools to Supercharge Your Experiments
You need the ability to rapidly generate, test, and act on different hypotheses. Then double down on the ideas that work, scratch the ones that don’t, and keep testing…
That’s why these are my top 3 growth tools. They allow you to implement tests and measure results much faster than ever before.
1. Segment
Segment.com is a brilliant tool that adds a small snippet of code to your site’s head tag. This snippet effectively acts as a collector for site data.
Here’s the cool part: it then translates that data and sends it out to a growing list of apps including Google Analytics, Heap, Mailchimp, Intercom and more.
Just send your data to the segment API using something like this:
analytics.identify('1e810c197e', {
name: 'Bill Lumbergh',
email: 'bill@initech.com'
});Bam! That user data now gets sent to segment, and you can just flip a switch to use it with any of these different integrations.
Segment tops the list, not because it’s a direct growth tool, but because it facilitates the use of so many other tools.
Want to try Twitter Ads? How about Adroll? Or maybe Qualaroo? No problem. Just sign up for the service and then flip the switch in Segment.
No need to access your code or fill your site with different API calls. It’s not free, but it’s well worth it.
2. Google Tag Manager
Along a similar line, Google Tag Manager is a container that goes into the body section of your site. It can also be integrated using segment (though you might want to install it separately if you’re on a budget).
Google tag manager is entirely free and gives you the ability to do all kinds of cool things without having to access your code. Here’s a list of 10.
Possibly the coolest part is that you can now use tag manager to implement customer html events. This means that you can use tag manger to send events to segment like so:
Mind blown.
This means that all you have to do is install two tools to get access to all of the data and integrations that you need to grow your site. That’s it. Two tools and you’re off to the races.
3. Upwork
Upwork.com is more of a marketplace than a SaaS tool, but I find it nearly indispensable for rapidly testing new ideas.
Formerly Odesk and Elance, Upwork is now the single largest source of freelancers online. If you’re not familiar with the site or it’s predecessors, Upwork is simply a community with all types of remote workers scattered throughout the world.
You can use it to hire a virtual assistant, writer, SEO, or even a developer. While I wouldn’t recommend using Odesk to attempt to find highly skilled programming talent (there are much better sources like Toptal), it’s an amazing resource for inexpensive human capital.
If you have a growth idea that requires a good amount of manual implementation, odesk is the perfect resource. Just write out exact instructions for what you need done and hire someone. Pay with your credit card, and the whole process can take less than a day.
Once you find a good worker, try to hang onto them and re-use them for ongoing projects. You can find good help for between $5 and $15 per hour, depending on the task. At those rates, it’s often hard to justify coding many of your unproven test.
Use Upwork to crank up your human capital and raw testing volume.
These are my 3 top tools for accelerating experimentation. What are yours?
