What do growth experiments and workouts have in common?

Hi there 👋,

We know that creating new habits is hard. It is hard (not impossible, but hard) to go from being a couch potato to working out five days a week.

You might miraculously manage it for one week, or even two, but I doubt you’ll last longer than that. 

So what do they advise instead?

Do a single 20-minute workout once a week, just one little jog or gym session. Once you’ve got that under control, build it up.

Simple enough, so now let’s apply that logic to experimenting.

What is habit theory?

A habit is formed when behaviour is repeatedly performed in a consistent manner. Do something enough times, and it becomes a habit.

This applies to beneficial habits, like running or drinking enough water, as well as less helpful habits, like sleeping in or skipping workouts.

So anything can become a habit if you do it enough times. But to do something enough times, you need to take it slow and build it up.

I believe the same can be said for experimentation.

How can we apply this to experimentation?

I used the habit theory to create my 5-stage process for experiment tracking.

We start by tracking what we are already doing, understanding what is and isn’t an experiment, and what makes a strong hypothesis and experiment setup. 

Is that going well? Incredible!

Let’s add a second workout: track experiments consistently for one area, e.g. website improvements.

We’ll also add a bit of structure by defining the ‘themes’ we are testing consistently, e.g. improving value proposition or reducing friction.

Now that you’ve got that habit down, you can create a broader, more structured workout routine.

It’s time to start tracking experiments across your key focus areas.

Why are you even working out? What exercises will help you to reach that goal faster?

This forces you to really focus and use experimentation as a tool to move faster and more focused as a team.

As you can see, this is already three separate steps.

How fast you move from each stage depends, just like with exercising, on where you started and how comfortable and confident you feel.

From there, we add a more extensive warm-up as we exercise longer and faster: a clearer ideation and prioritisation framework.

We create a backlog of all our potential ideas to experiment around and learn to prioritise them. 

Finally, it’s time to reflect on our progress towards our workout/experimentation goals and potentially level it up.

For growth experimentation, this involves reviewing your tooling, how many experiments you should run, and how you learn from ‘failed’ experiments. 

Recommendation

In every edition of Growth Waves, I also share a related book, individual or newsletter to check out related to the week's topic.

Well, I don’t think you’ll find anything more related to my 5-stage process than the course itself!

In my course, Growth Experiment Tracking, we build upon the habit of experiment tracking.

You receive my own tracking spreadsheet, to build upon and personalise to your needs.

It’s not just about writing down the results of an experiment.

It’s how you conduct an experiment, when not to conduct an experiment, what to do with those results, and so much more.

If you’re ready to make experiment tracking a consistent habit, check it out now.

Want to learn more about experimentation, optimisation and growth from some of the leading voices in Conversion Rate Optimisation?

On March 19th, I’ll be speaking alongside several top voices in the CRO community at Conversionboost in Copenhagen, Denmark, about how your failed experiments are your biggest opportunities, and how to learn from them.

Get your tickets below - hope to see many of you there 🙂 

You don’t have to jump off your couch and run a marathon. You don’t have to do one experiment and unlock the secret formula for growth.

I wish it were so easy in both of those examples.

But you do have to show up and invest in your learning and skills. You do have to be consistent with your experimentation (and your workouts).

Before you know it, you’ll have formed an unbreakable habit for growth.

Daphne