Editor’s Note: This transcript was created using AI transcription and formatting tools. While we’ve reviewed it for accuracy, some errors may remain. If anything seems unclear, we recommend referring back to the episode above.
Episode Trailer
“Why do developers use dark mode? I have no clue—because lights attract bugs! I’m sorry, I really love this geeky joke.”
“I went to LinkedIn this morning and then I just scrolled past the first 10 posts in my LinkedIn feed and they were all from men. Now I have nothing against men—I love men, I live together with men, I work with men, it’s all good—but I do think sometimes women’s voices are under-represented or you don’t see them as often, and I think that’s a problem because it’s half of our society.”
“The more AI we use, the more human we will need to become. In some ways we have some things in common as women that kind of sets us back or make us different. It is what it is—I’m not going to fix that—but what I can try and fix is at least bring us together and share those experiences that we have and try to learn and grow from each other.”
“When you’re starting out, you’re so eager to learn and willing to take in as much information as possible. Facilitate that beginner’s mind.”
“The thing is, if you don’t share what you know, if you don’t share your perspective, then this perspective or this knowledge is missing. And it might feel as though because it’s not there, it’s not good or it’s not the mainstream or it feels awkward, but that’s just the more reason to show your knowledge and your expertise on something.”
“With women in experimentation, we are holding a conference this year. We have just found a very nice diverse group of speakers, but it would be great to see a lot of people there. Keep tuned for more nice stuff, and it would be cool to see you at the online summit of Women in Experimentation.”
About VWO
Welcome to another episode of the Women in CRO series by VWO podcast. This series is an ode to the contribution of women in the CRO industry.
Before we speak to our special guest for this episode, here’s a quick summary of who we are and what we do: VWO is a leading experience optimization platform that helps fast-growing brands optimize their digital experiences. Using our latest product, VWO Insights, you can understand user journeys and identify conversion roadblocks on your website and mobile apps.
So without any further delay, let’s jump right into the conversation.
Guest Introduction
Shilpa: Hello to all our listeners and viewers. In today’s episode, we have Lucia van den Brink, founder and experimentation lead at IncreaseConversionRate.com.
Lucia has a wealth of experience ranging from founding ventures to advising renowned brands. She has been a driving force in affecting impactful change in digital landscapes. Also, she has developed cutting-edge experimentation programs, led workshops, and guided teams dedicated to optimizing the online presence of billion-dollar corporations and nimble startups alike.
Her expertise extends to cultivating cultures of experimentation, selecting the optimal A/B testing tools, and conducting comprehensive conversion research. Going above and beyond, she also has devoted her efforts to empowering women in experimentation through her platform Women in Experimentation, fostering a supportive community and organizing insightful summits and webinars.
You can visit www.increaseconversionrate.com to learn more about her work.
Main Interview
Current Projects and Business Growth
Shilpa: Hey Lucia, welcome to the Women in CRO podcast. How are you doing today?
Lucia: Hey, thanks so much for having me. I’m great. I’m looking forward to our conversation.
Shilpa: How’s the week started off for you? Any interesting plans for this week?
Lucia: Good question. What are my interesting things this week? I was setting up a brainstorm for a team, but we couldn’t make it to be all on the same meeting, so we’re going to do it asynchronously, which is always a little bit more of a challenge to organize. What else I was doing? I was trying to calculate some of the efforts of a CRO program together with someone from paid media. Those were just some stuff that I started my week with.
Shilpa: That’s great to hear, and I hope 2024 is treating you well.
Lucia: It started off with a bang, definitely. It’s been a good start of the year for me. I only founded my own company like a year ago—I didn’t know how it would go—but it’s going really great actually, and I couldn’t have imagined it to be so successful. So I’m very happy to be helping out so many people and companies, and yeah, people all over the world actually.
Morning Routines and Personal Habits
Shilpa: Can you share some morning routines that you like to start with that give you a head start?
Lucia: I really like my mornings. I’m really a morning person—I know not everyone is like that—but I also really like to wake up before the rest of the world does to have no interference. And also when you come from sleep, you have this different state of mind which can be very calm and nice. So I really like to utilize that to do creative work or to just focus on the most important things of my day.
So I guess it depends, but I really like to either work on something complicated, something that I need to use my creative problem-solving brain. So usually I start with tasks like that in the morning. I also really like to get a workout done before sitting behind a computer because it’s hard sometimes to balance sitting behind a computer and moving your body, and I think it’s very important. So that’s also something I like to do. And yeah, then I just start with my biggest thing of the day.
Early Career and Background
Shilpa: Something that you love about these conversations is how much perspective you gain by just talking to different people. Growing up, considering that CRO is such a niche still, did you know that you were going to be a part of this field, or what did you imagine yourself doing?
Lucia: I guess not, right? I hadn’t expected myself to be doing what I do right now. I don’t think it’s a field that even existed back then. I thought I wanted to be a swimming instructor when I was very young, so that’s very different.
But at one point when I was like 10, 11 years old, we had a computer in the house, and then I quite fast started to develop websites actually, and web shops. And I really love that because you could build your own stuff in this virtual world, and that would just be so cool. And I would try to optimize it all the time—have a new design, change the design, make it better.
So I guess that was just kind of from my own interest, and I guess what you do as a kid can really also guide you in what you like to do later, and it did guide me. I did take some funny paths here and there—I studied journalism, I studied Japanese, which is a funny mix, I guess—but then ended up in the tech world that we are in, and then specifically experimentation, which didn’t even exist until like a couple of years ago. So yeah, it’s been fun to discover all of this.
LinkedIn Growth and Social Media Strategy
Shilpa: You’re so active on LinkedIn. You’ve recently hit a milestone of 10K LinkedIn followers—congratulations on that. How does social media in general impact you, and how has it affected your business? How do you take it in your daily routine?
Lucia: It’s a mix of things, right? It can be good, it can be bad, so you always need to keep a balance there. I think if I speak about posting on LinkedIn, there was a long period that I thought, “Hey, I have nothing to say, I have nothing to tell.” I see all these people on LinkedIn sharing stuff, but that’s not me. So that was when I was starting out.
But then eventually—I don’t know, maybe I also got more self-confidence—but then I started to learn things in my job, and then I noticed that people would be very interested in that. I think at that time I was also working at the biggest news website in the Netherlands, which had a lot of visitors, so people would really know this website and would be very curious about how does it work there. And I just started sharing that in daily life but also on LinkedIn, and sharing sometimes some stuff that we learned, and people would really love that because they kind of would learn together with me. So that was really the start, and I really enjoyed it.
And I guess that’s what I’m still trying to do now. A lot of times people ask me, “Do you have a LinkedIn strategy?” And I’m not sure, actually. I’ve tried to at least identify the things or the buckets that I want to be talking about, so I do have three big topics in my mind. But most of it is just me having fun, or I’m trying to teach people something, or I’m trying to talk about something that is not getting enough attention, for example, or I want to put a counter-voice out there. So I also use it in a little bit of a rebellious way sometimes to start a conversation about topics in a different direction.
So it’s been really fun. I also really like to write, so I’m sure that helps. But of course, it’s also about balancing the time that you spend there, managing the influences you get, thinking about what do you think is good content or what is not, and not being too addicted to social media is of course also very important. And just go outside and walk and live your life—that’s important to also keep remembering sometimes.
AI and Human Collaboration
Shilpa: I would love to talk about a LinkedIn post that specially stood out for me. You had mentioned, “The more AI we use, the more human we become.” This is very open to interpretation. Now AI is the buzzword in the industry—everyone’s going gaga over it. What are your thoughts, and how do you see it transforming this industry?
Lucia: It’s an exciting development, and I think everyone thinks so. The thing I posted—”the more AI we use, the more human we will need to become”—is kind of because I see how I use AI, I see how people around me use AI, and it’s great. It helps take away some of the daily chores or make things easier—it’s great.
But I’m sure there are some things that AI cannot do and that we as humans are very good at. And I think, for example, one of those things might be collaboration between different people—between, for example, a developer and a designer and maybe someone from SEO. But maybe I’m wrong.
But I do think if AI is going to be bigger, that means that we will be focusing or we will have more time to focus on what we are really good at as humans. And we don’t need people anymore to do robot jobs or AI jobs, but we can really focus on different types of work.
So yeah, I’m really curious where this is headed. Maybe I’m totally wrong, maybe AI will take over everything, but I don’t believe so. I do believe it is a computer we train, and for at least for a while, we will still have some advantages as humans as well. And I think we’ll have more space actually for that, so I’m very curious for that development.
Shilpa: I totally agree with you, especially when we talk about things like user research. I don’t think AI is going to take over that. At the end of the day, these people or our customers are humans, we are humans. AI can’t really understand how humans think—as much as we train it to be, still I feel like we have a gut instinct that maybe the AI does not. And then that gut instinct eventually leads to research, eventually leads to testing, and so many other things.
Women in Experimentation Community
Shilpa: Something that you mentioned, which was collaboration—I see how much you talk about collaboration, and I feel that a certain extended version of this is Women in Experimentation. You’re the founder of this particular community, and I’ve seen that when I was talking to so many other guest speakers, almost everybody has mentioned you and how you have impacted their lives. I want to understand how did the need for this come up? Did you encounter certain challenges that you felt, “Listen, I want to be there for the women community in this industry specifically and help them out”?
Lucia: I think first of all, it’s just about being aware. I kind of had a feeling that you would maybe ask this question, and I went to LinkedIn this morning and then I just scrolled past the first 10 posts in my LinkedIn feed, and they were all from men. Now I have nothing against men—I love men, I live together with men, I work with men, it’s all good—but I do think sometimes women’s voices are under-represented or you don’t see them as often. And I think that’s a problem because it’s half of our society, and we are different, so it might be women have different perspectives on things as well.
So that’s the start. And then you also see on podcast lineups or sometimes events that there are no female speakers, and that’s just so weird to me because I know so many great women who do awesome work. And then it’s like they are just not there, or I don’t know what happens there. We don’t have to figure that out right now, but there is a difference there, I guess.
And I was also speaking to someone that told me, “Hey, I am looking for women, but there just are no good women in CRO,” which was kind of like, “Oh, okay, so you’re talking to me right now, so that’s kind of an insult.” But I do see there’s a little nuance to it—maybe there are fewer women, or maybe there are fewer visible women.
So in order to have a fair representation of women in CRO or in experimentation or in whatever field—because it can be male-dominated, and that’s fine—but it is nice to see other people represented as well to be closer to our society, I would say.
And I think I had a lot of experiences leading up to this point. For example, I had a miscarriage at an event, at a conference—and you know, that’s a very heavy thing, but I’m just talking very openly about it now—but it did make me realize, “Hey, in this situation I am very different than all my male co-workers,” while this experience does connect me to a lot of women as well. So it was like this funny split that I thought, “Yeah, sometimes we as women, we are different. Maybe sometimes we are focused on our bodies or something’s going on—not always, of course—but there are differences.”
And sometimes maybe these differences also put us back or set us back. And I think it’s the same with if you think about experiencing sexual assaults—in the US, one in six women has experienced an attempt to rape or has been raped. I think that’s a lot of women, and you take these experiences with you. You take this experience with you in the workforce, in how you work, how you do your job. Maybe people are traumatized.
I had some experiences myself which I know now, looking back, it did influence how I dealt with, for example, managers on the work floor. So in some ways, we have some things in common as women that kind of sets us back or make us different. And it is what it is—I’m not going to fix that—but what I can try and fix is at least bring us together and share those experiences that we have and try to learn and grow from each other.
I cannot fight the whole world, I cannot change a lot of things, but that one little thing that I could do was actually—it actually started with a list of just names of women that would speak on conferences because I just wanted to show, “Hey, we are right here. Look how many amazing women are just right here.” And now every time that someone says they don’t have a mixed lineup, we can just be very positive and say, “Hey, look at this list. Look how many amazing women are there.”
So that was a start, but then it grew so big and there was such big demand for this that we turned it into a community. I got some people helping me out as well, and then now we have this vibrant global community of women in experimentation that help each other out, that meet up if they are in the same country or at the same conference. And it’s really not about me anymore at all, but it’s just like now there is the space to come together, to invite each other to go for a coffee, to help each other out. And I really love what Women in Experimentation has become.
Technical Specialties: App and Server-Side Testing
Shilpa: Thank you for sharing that insight. I’m so sorry for your loss, and it’s just bizarre to me how it’s not been talked about often enough and why there’s just one community—why not so many other communities? Just switching gears a little—talking about your specialties, which are majorly in app testing and server-side testing, what are the kind of challenges do you face there, and something that you’d like to talk about when you talk to clients about app testing and server-side testing?
Lucia: I think when companies start out, it’s usually client-side code and experiments like that. But when you’re trying to take a step up to app testing or to server-side testing, it is quite different, and you’re going to need different people to help you out, different set of teams, different skill sets maybe.
So if you talk about app testing, it’s very different because if you’re talking about experimentation in a native app, first of all, you’re going to need a native developer to build stuff for you—so an Android developer, for example. Then you have your experiments—it probably needs to be released to the store, so it’s not like, “Oh, you just push a change live and you can run an experiment.” No, you have to push it to the store, the store has to accept that, then the users need to download that code to their phone. So that period usually takes a while.
There are some things you can do to speed that process up—not everything has to be release-based—but major things usually are. So that makes for a different kind of team that you will need, a different kind of expertise. You also need to measure that, and it’s just a whole new world, so to say.
And then with server-side testing, it kind of heads into the same direction, although it might be a little bit easier. What’s nice about it, of course, is that you don’t have this flicker effect that you see—you see the change happening. It’s better cookie-wise and keeping people in variants, also keeping them longer in variants. But it’s a little bit more technical to set up maybe initially and to work with it. But I do love to see companies doing this and taking on this challenge and moving forward with experimentation in different routes as well.
Experimentation Philosophy and Non-Negotiables
Shilpa: I was talking about the LinkedIn post—something that I also noticed was how you spoke about the winning tests and how initially you used to run behind just the winning tests. I feel that’s very relatable because I remember when I started off, I was so focused on delivering just the winning tests to my clients, and it was only after a few tests—maybe a few failed tests, not failed as in, but just tests that were losers but had a lot of learnings—and while explaining it to my clients, while talking about the learnings, something that struck me was, “Hey, this is experimentation.” You can’t just take away the literal meaning of experimentation. It means there is no right or wrong—you will have to identify only once you test it out. My next question is around the same lines: what are the non-negotiables for you when it comes to running tests? What are the factors that you won’t just shy away from?
Lucia: I think it’s good to have some knowledge about the statistics, so not just running tests until they become significant, but really understand sample sizes. I’m trying to understand—I always try to help teach people to use both frequentist and Bayesian—two different methods. Most of the time, the same outcome, not always, but it’s just a different way of talking about data and presenting data and using data. There is no right or wrong—I think there are different methods for different clients or different programs or different setups, but it’s great to know that as a base.
I think CRO is often something that you do together with a team, with different people. So I do always push for that as well, although I am also a very introverted person actually. But I have experienced so much wealth from other people’s brains and working together. I also try to post about that—what’s the effect of ideation when you do it alone versus when you do it with multiple people? And the effects of that are just so impressive, and so that gets me very excited.
So I think those two are what I would say right now. The basics of statistics—it does help, of course, if you know a little bit of CSS, HTML, if you know how to hack the page a little bit, if you know how to collect data, how to set up events. It’s all great, but most of the time, CRO and experimentation is a team effort.
And it’s also an effort that you only do if you really want to be on top of your game and you want to be maybe the best in your field or in your area. If you’re just starting out, CRO and experimentation is not something that you really should start with. It’s like being a top athlete and trying to improve where your little toe is standing, for example. It can be very detailed.
Diverse Background and Karate Experience
Shilpa: That’s a great analogy, by the way. And while you’re a CRO expert, you’ve written two literary novels as well, you’ve been a karate champion—do you still find time for these things considering there are so many things other than work?
Lucia: I guess I am a funny mix of things, of identities, and I guess as a person you can be so many things as well. Karate I don’t practice so actively anymore, but I do have to say it comes back in everything that I do. I trained for 15 years, did a lot of competitions—World Championship, European Championships—and then first of all, what you learn is how to perform under stress, how to deal with failure as well, because if you lose, you will always look back and try to learn from that. So that’s just like experimentation.
And it’s the same—maybe that’s where the toe analogy comes from—because at one point, if you become really good at something, it’s not about changing the basics anymore. It’s really about changing very little stuff that can still make effects to make you win the competition.
Industry Predictions and Future Trends
Shilpa: Again, a great insight. If it boils down to the same thing, how much you’ve learned in your childhood—again, everything is a mix of all the phases of your life. Talking about CRO and the CRO industry, do you have any sort of predictions for this industry, something that you feel will happen in the next few years?
Lucia: It’s always a hard question. Of course, we have AI, and my thoughts on that we’ve already discussed. So I think by using more AI, we will need to focus more on what makes us human and what makes us unique and what we’re good at.
But I also hope that we learn that we are kind of built to experiment as people. We are built to fail and learn, and we shouldn’t shy away from that, and we shouldn’t put a big ego in front and say, “Oh, we already know what to do, we’re going to do it like this.” No, we can just fail and learn, and I think that’s a very nice approach, a very nice mindset. I would love for everyone to share that same mindset also in the future and also for companies, because it does multiple things—it keeps you eager, it keeps you learning, it keeps you growing, keeps you moving.
But what I’ve also seen is it does change companies as well, or it can change companies, or at least in a very small way, because if you experiment and you have a bigger experimentation program, what can happen is that an intern suggests an idea, or maybe the CEO suggests an idea, and then you use prioritization to choose where to start, for example. But very different people can both have a great idea based on data, for example, based on their knowledge. And I really love that about experimentation, especially when it’s facilitated well, that everyone can try out their ideas and that there is an openness to that.
And I think that’s again that wealth that we have as a group of people together—to use and leverage other people’s knowledge, other people’s skills or backgrounds, or just diversity in a very broad sense. And I really hope companies will use this more, and I think eventually it might also lead to people being happier in organizations and happier in their work and being more autonomous. So that’s something that I will at least try to help facilitate, but let’s see where it goes.
Advice for Newcomers
Shilpa: When we talk about the newcomers, something that you mentioned just before—you mentioned that if somebody is a newcomer, they might not want to jump to the CRO field altogether. What kind of advice do you have for these people, and if somebody really wants to start a career in CRO, what is it that they should start with first?
Lucia: Maybe what I really like about starting things and learning things is something called the beginner’s mind, which is something that comes from Zen Buddhism. And what it is is basically when you’re starting out, you’re so eager to learn and willing to take in as much information as possible.
So I would say facilitate that beginner’s mind—go there and try to learn as much as possible from diverse sources. But also maybe you can try something yourself. If you have a website yourself, go connect it to maybe a free testing tool or a free trial and see if you can set up an experiment. And of course, maybe you’re never going to have the correct sample size, but at least you have some experience in setting it up, and you begin to understand how it really works.
So I guess making things small and see where you can really do something yourself—that’s always a good start. And then the rest is just like experimentation—you go there, you try, learn, you bring all that with you, and you try to keep your mind open.
I always do try to keep this beginner’s mind, but it gets really hard if you have a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience. You do tend to rely on that, and that’s not a bad thing, but sometimes I wish I was this blank sheet again that I could just soak up everything, all the information. And by now I’ve kind of soaked up a lot of information, and then you already know, “Okay, this is the way I go, and this is the direction I take, and this is what I don’t like.”
But that beginner’s mind is actually really something beautiful. And of course, you’re going to feel like you don’t know anything, you’re going to feel incapable maybe, it feels overwhelming. But the more and longer you do something, the easier it usually becomes. But that’s something that’s quite hard to imagine—of course, you keep working on it and you’ll get better, but it’s really hard to really imagine, to really hold on to, to keep on learning and keep on trying.
I think that’s also a Japanese proverb—”Fall down six times and stand up seven times.” So you know, just keep on falling, keep on standing up, and that’s learning, and that’s also what experimentation is.
Personal Advice and Self-Reflection
Shilpa: I think a lot of people needed to hear that proverb for sure. Talking about advice—while we’re on the topic of advice itself—any advice that you’d like to give—if you had the chance to give advice to your younger self, what would that be? And the other part of this question is: what’s the best advice that you have ever received?
Lucia: I think if I would look to my younger self, I think at first I would try to be like other people. So I would want to become—maybe I had someone in my team that was very good with data, and then I tried to become that person, I tried to learn everything. Which is good, right? Which is this open mindset. But there is a limit to that because you are yourself—you are your unique person, and it might be that you’re just not good at everything at all.
But I think after a while, when you have been super open and you’ve seen a lot of things and learned a lot of things, you also see, “Hey, I am particularly good at this.” And maybe there’s no one talking about that, or maybe there is no one doing that, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do that at all or shouldn’t start with that.
So that’s something that I’m still learning—what are actually my strengths? What are the things I learned in my life, and how can I use those in my work? And that’s something that also helped create Women in Experimentation, for example, because I took maybe some bad experiences, I took the pain that I had for the world and that I saw that it wasn’t really correct, and I tried to change that and make it into something positive.
But it’s the same with skills—you’re never going to be good at everything. I’m sure there are people that are very widely skilled, and that’s definitely possible, but it’s good to know your strengths, and it’s good to know also what you’re not so good at. And try to learn that you don’t have to be everything, you don’t have to be good at everything as well. So sometimes you can just be yourself and explore what you’re good at.
Defining Success
Shilpa: Well spoken. We’re talking about newcomers—something I feel for me, for that matter, a lot of us juggle or are just overwhelmed with the term success. How do you define success in your personal and your professional life?
Lucia: I work with different clients, and I always try to learn as soon as possible what success for them looks like. And sometimes that’s just winning experiments. And of course, we know as people with the knowledge that we have that it’s not only about winning experiments, but then I always try to—okay, if your goal is just to make money and to have only winning experiments, if they hire me, then I’m right there and I can teach them all about learning from losing experiments as well. I can teach them all about collaborating as a team and coming up with new ideas.
Success for companies might be one thing, but success for me as a person might be another layer underneath that because I’m more experienced, and I try to combine that, for example. And it’s hard to determine when experimentation programs, for example, are successful. Of course, it helps if you have a nice win rate, but as you might know, Airbnb has a win rate of 8%, which is really low, but which happens because they experiment a lot. I know that Ron Kohavi is sharing a lot of information about that.
So whatever metric you focus on, it is never truly representative of anything. And I guess if you’re just beginning, that can be hard or it can be frustrating, but just try to keep on going. Try to make it successful in whatever way. Success can also be that you are learning something, that the company is learning something. And even if they don’t see that, you might still see that. So it also—maybe you have to incorporate a little bit of gratitude in little things and for little things.
I know sometimes people can get very frustrated with experimentation programs not being up to par to certain standards, but I always try to focus on, “Hey, they want to experiment. That’s already a great start.” So you know, even if the rest is total chaos, then just that little mindset and that willingness is already something to be that is successful in its way. So you can always look to the little things as well.
And I think you also asked me about my personal life—what I think success looks like. I think as I’m getting older, I’m trying to learn how to just be myself and be without any identity or without having to rely on anything, which is kind of maybe a Buddhist philosophy. I’m not sure it’s always the case, but that’s something that I’m trying to work on—how can I just be without too much disturbances, too much things, and just live your life, be okay with it, learn stuff, fail, and it’s all good. There is no ego, no identity layer. But that’s very personal, of course.
Client Expectations and Education
Shilpa: While you were talking about companies and their success metrics, do you encounter clients who say, “Okay, I am here so experimentation is going to increase my revenue for sure, increase my conversion rate for sure,” and when it doesn’t happen with two or three tests, irrespective of anything, they are just very agitated, very frustrated? Do you still encounter those questions, and how do you work around the same?
Lucia: 100%. So CRO and experimentation is seen as this little trick you can do to increase your conversion rate, for example. That’s just not always how it is. I do take clients that have this mindset and have this perspective, but I always try to be open about how I see things.
So if they say, “Hey, we want 80% of our experiments to win, and we want to have five million revenue,” I always try to be open and try to say, “Hey, the average win rate is, for example, I think VWO says 14%.” So that means you’re gonna have a lot of things wrong—that means a lot of ideas are not going to work. But if you know which ideas are not going to work and you don’t implement them on your website, that also saves you from harm.
And I often also share examples of companies that have gone bankrupt or have gone through bad times because they just would implement a redesign, and then only later—the next month—they would learn, “Whoa, this is really bad, this is not working, our conversion rate is lower, what’s going on?” And everyone would really believe in such a design without validating it.
But it’s also all about learning that we just don’t know everything, and that there’s a lot to test and to actually see and learn what happens.
Advice for Women in Business
Shilpa: Coming back to one of our initial points, Lucia, which was Women in CRO—not just women in CRO, I would say, but in general women in every business—do you have some advice for the new girls out there or in general for women in business, anything that you’d like to share with them? People who are dreaming big, they’re hesitant in taking the next step?
Lucia: I have lots of advice to share, but maybe if I had to share one, then it would be to believe in yourself a little bit more and to believe in your knowledge. The thing is, if you don’t share what you know, if you don’t share your perspective, then this perspective or this knowledge is missing. And it might feel as though because it’s not there, it’s not good, or it’s not the mainstream, or it feels awkward, but that’s just the more reason to show your knowledge and your expertise on something.
So if you see—that’s something that I always have—if I see 10 men speak about something in my LinkedIn feed, then I feel like, “Oh, I also have to be there,” because just for the balance and just to have different perspectives, because that’s a really important thing. So don’t put yourself down. Try to believe in yourself. Try to focus on the things you’re good at, even if they’re different than other people. And go and fail and learn and stand up again, I guess.
Rapid Fire Round
Shilpa: I feel again, this is something that a lot of us really need to hear. I feel as women, before anybody else puts us down, we put ourselves down first, so that’s also something that we really need to stop doing or at least move towards stop doing that. Great discussion, Lucia. Thank you so much. I’ve had a fantastic conversation, so much to learn. We’ll switch gears a little here—I have a quick rapid fire segment. Would love it if you’re spontaneous here with your answers. All right, let’s begin.
Q: Three apps that you can’t live without? A: I have—my husband built me a list, a supermarket list, and then I just put my groceries there and it’s great. So that’s one—I mean, food is important. What else do I use on my phone? I do use LinkedIn a lot, as you might understand with 10K followers, maybe sometimes too much, so that’s number two. And then number three is I think my calendar, because I am a founder and because I want to do a lot of stuff, it’s important to manage your time and to pick the right things to spend your time on. So I actually spend a lot of time in that calendar app and trying to arrange my life and the people I talk to and the people I work with and what I’m going to spend time on.
Q: If a movie was made about your life, what would the title be? A: Oh gosh, that’s a hard one. I don’t immediately have a spontaneous answer as well. Maybe something like, “Take the negative and make it into something positive,” but then in a nicer title.
Q: One thing that you’d like to change about the CRO industry? A: I think I’m already trying to work on that, so it’s like having more different types of voices out there—not only women actually, but also different cultures and different countries and just different people in general. And next to that, also sometimes I feel like we are not working with all the people that we can work with in experimentation. We should try to involve more people, more departments within big corporates, for example. So those are two things that I think are missing and that I would like to see changed.
Q: What’s the most random fact you know by heart? A: Hmm, I’m not really good at facts. I do have a funny joke that comes up, which is not really a fact, but maybe I can just say it anyway because now I’m not thinking of any fact. But why do developers use dark mode? What would you say? I have no clue—because lights attract bugs! I’m sorry, I really love this geeky joke.
Q: Your guilty pleasure when it comes to TV show or movie? A: Oh, guilty pleasures. I don’t watch that much TV, but I do like kind of relationship programs, so you have these dating shows, and just to see how different people interact with each other, how different people respond, how they fight, how they are nice to each other. So that’s something I can really enjoy.
Q: If you had a podcast, who’s the first person that you would invite on the show? A: Can it be anyone? It can be anybody. Oh, that’s maybe even harder than I said. I’m really bad at spontaneous answers, as you can see. I really want to think about this question a long time and then make a list and then prioritize a list—that’s maybe also the little bit of the experimentation process. I do love a lot of writers as well since I’ve written books, but that’s maybe not an experimentation podcast. So for an experimentation podcast, who would I invite? Maybe I would try to invite someone that isn’t quite as known, that isn’t quite there yet. So what you usually see in podcasts is the big names, and people love that because they know them, but I would like to shine a little light on different types of people—maybe people that are just starting out, or maybe people that are really good at what they do. So I think I would try to focus on that.
Q: Three books that you would recommend to our listeners? A: I can see a lot of books there—there’s a whole wall here of books. What do I have here? “Experimentation Works” is one book I have here, which is good. It’s a good base. What else? Books I recommend… I also recommend the book called “Diversity Bonus.” So this is not necessarily only about experimentation, but it’s about using people that are different from you to have a different perspective and to—well, I use it to have more successful experimentation programs. So I try to use different types of people to make my experimentation programs more of a success. Looking at the bookshelf here, there’s so much good stuff to pick from. Because we still need a third book, what is a nice third book for experimentation? I was also reading the book called “Multipliers,” and I think that’s more maybe if you’re in a leadership role, which I am now often—but how do you help get the best out of people? And how do you—sometimes people can also do the opposite thing, so they don’t get the best out of you and they kind of limit what you’re good at. But I really like to learn from the book “Multipliers”—what you can actually do to make people feel that they are worth more than they think they are, that they have more potential than they think they have. And I wish more people would read that book, especially in leadership positions, to facilitate that more. Because it’s great if you can help someone out, and it’s great if you can see someone grow as well. So it’s not only to be nice to someone else, but it’s also for the benefit of everyone—also for yourself, to see someone grow is just an amazing thing.
Q: What is that one superpower that you would like to have? A: I would like to go back in time, I think, and change things. But maybe that would also be a bad thing because then you go back and correct all your mistakes, and what happens then? But I don’t know, I sometimes also think about the past and I think, “Oh, if I would have done that, it would have had such a bigger impact, or it would have been so much better.” Anyway, okay.
Q: One thing that you’re tired of explaining to your clients? A: Yeah, for sure—interaction effects. I’m tired of interaction effects between tests, but it always comes up, especially in new experimentation programs. Sometimes even in big corporates—I am working for a big client right now, and they previously had only run one test in the journey all the time, and they could do so much more, they could learn so much more. So yeah, interaction effects are this thing that everyone thinks exists and that influence each other a lot, and I always try to explain, “Yeah, but it’s split again 50/50, so the effect is away. And if it’s there, we can measure it, but we almost never find it.” All that stuff—it is a hard topic to explain, so maybe that’s why it keeps coming up. But sometimes I am tired of it. And I know Lukas Vermeer, who now works at Vista and has worked at Booking.com—he has some blog series about it, he also speaks about it on stages, and he’s trying to find those interaction effects, and they’re almost just never there.
Q: One goal or dream that you would like to achieve in say the next three years? A: Yeah, for me personally, it’s growing my company and trying to involve people. So right now, I sometimes hire people to work with me, but in the future, I would like to hire people on a payroll and to just work together and help people learn and help people grow. But in order to do that, that’s not going to be the first year immediately probably, but that’s something that I am looking forward to—how can I share what I’ve learned, not just through LinkedIn, but also by creating a work environment, I guess? And I hope that happens really soon.
Closing
Shilpa: Lucia, thank you so much for taking out your valuable time for this discussion. I honestly really loved it—I think I’ve mentioned it a couple of times, and I’m really enjoying this conversation. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this podcast with us. You know, congratulations—I think there are a lot of things to congratulate you for. I feel Women in CRO community—it started in February last year, it’s already a year to that. Your company, IncreaseConversionRate—it’s going to be one year, I believe, in March. So congratulations on that. And then again, 10K LinkedIn followers—congratulations. I think so many things. I really hope that this year is a banger for you, and I hope that you continue to do all the good work that you’re doing. Any parting thoughts that you would like to share with us or with our listeners?
Lucia: So with Women in Experimentation, we are holding a conference this year. We have just found a very nice diverse group of speakers, but just keep on following me and following the community for the dates and for how to actually go and watch us. It will be online, but it would be great to see a lot of people there because we have a really nice set of speakers that are going to teach us a lot of interesting things. So keep tuned for more nice stuff, and it would be cool to see you at the online summit of Women in Experimentation.
Shilpa: Absolutely, I’m definitely going to be there. Thank you so much, Lucia. I hope you have a great day and a great week ahead. Thank you so much, take care.
Lucia: Cool, thanks so much. Have a great day.
