Discover UI Design Decisions Of Leading Companies,
From Leaked Screenshots & A/B Tests.
Showing 43 results
Airbnb Discovers A Better Calendar Picker Component From This UI Experiment
This was a simple calendar picker experiment that Aribnb recently ran and eventually rolled out. The A/B test contains at least 4 simple UI changes which might have contributed to a positive outcome. And so this also shows us what a slightly better UI component looks like. View Leak
Airbnb Attempts A Big Property Page Redesign But It Is Rejected After This A/B Test
Over two months ago I managed to detect this exciting product/property page redesign on Airbnb with at least 17 UI changes. Unfortunately, as hard as the Airbnb team must have worked on these layout improvements, we now can see that the experiment has ended and the old control version (A) remains the better performer. View Leak
Airbnb A/B Tests Search With Automatic Prompts Which Gets Rejected
In this listing page experiment, Airbnb tried an very similar search interaction that is already present on Booking.com's homepage. Instead of only asking users for their destination, the search interaction was extended to prompt for travel dates and number of guests. View Leak
Netflix Keeps Its Older Price Comparison Table And Rejects Their New Layout In This A/B Test
Netflix has been experimenting with the layout of their pricing plans. Challenging the more traditional pricing comparison table, instead they a/b tested three self-contained pricing plan tiles. This newer version however ended up being rejected as we noticed. View Leak
Booking A/B Tests Ghost Buttons, But Their Hopes Fade Away As Predicted
Ghosts buttons. We know that this style of buttons is net negative based on this evidence-based pattern. So when Booking ran this experiment, it's no surpirse that it was eventually rejected - a predictable replication. View Leak
Amazon's Loaded Hamburger Menu Beats Its Older Dropdown Version In This A/B Test
At first glance some A/B tests may seem like they are beautifully simple with a single controlled variable. Yet as we look at the experiment in more detail, more and more subtle differences start coming into view. This I think is the case with Amazon's most recent experiment where it seems that only a dropdown menu was shifted into a hamburger one - which ended up winning. View Leak
Bol Discovers Something Better Than Classic Pulldown Menus, As Expected
When Bol ran their list vs grid view experiment, they also included a variation that tested for another very simple change: the exposure of menu options. That is, the listing page variant was designed to check if three more visible pull down options would be better or worse than just showing them hidden inside the pulldown. View Leak
Booking Fails To Replicate Airbnb's Signup, This Experiment Suggests
It seems to me that Booking may have attempted a replication or imitation of one of their competitors - I'll let you be the judge. View Leak
Netflix A/B Tests A Single Plan Recommendation And It Becomes Rejected
Netflix made a bold move and challenged their traditional 3 plan pricing page with a preselected single plan recommendation. Clear and equally balanced choice vs. a single mid tier plan. View Leak
Google Also A/B Tests The List Vs The Grid
Interestingly, Google was also discovered a/b testing the list vs grid pattern just as Bol finished a similar experiment this month. The Google experiment ran on one of their shopping results pages with the specific query for "flowers". And the outcome? Looks like the grid beat the list and was rolled out in this case. View Leak
Bol A/B Tests The UI Classic: List Vs Grid View With A Clear Decision
I am continously interested in answering and providing guidance on whether grid or list views are in general better, worse or indifferent as one of many UI patterns. To my surprise, Bol.com the leading Dutch web shop, has recently a/b tested this classic pattern which we were super lucky to detect on their red wine product listing pages. After anticipating their leaked design decision, we eventually learned that lists fared better for Bol. This of course we'll now use as additional and emerging evidence to tip the scales of probability (and hopefully better predict similar future experiments). View Leak
Airbnb A/B Tests And Rejects Both Of These Social Proof Statements
Many companies have already tried and tested the pattern of displaying numerical social proof in some form or another. In this leaked experiment from Airbnb on their host signup landing page, we managed to detect two social proof statements that were eventually rejected. Here are some potential explanations as to possibly why they failed to deliver on an improvement. View Leak
Netflix Designs Their Button A Little Too Big
Sooner or later design properties should reach optimums for their given contexts. That is, UI elements will become just right - not too big and not too small, or not too high and not to low, etc. In this leak, it seems that Netflix has approached such an optimum when they tested various button sizes on their landing page. Given that form elements and buttons should generally be bigger, it was inevitable for this new evidence to appear as an example of a button being simply too big - as seen in this beautiful experiment. :) View Leak
Booking's Homepage Carousel Experiment Fails As Predicted
I was glad to detect this carousel experiment that Booking recently ran on their homepage because we've already seen similar experiments fail in the past. Instead of showing 5 location tiles, they tested a version that only showed 3 tiles at a time with an ability to slide for more - a carousel. It wasn't the automatic slider type that would unleash the wrath of Karl Gilis, but it was a user-invoked slider nevertheless. View Leak
Amazon Discovers That Product Availability And Price Belong Closer Towards Add To Cart
In this little experiment, Amazon shifted the availability information towards the center of its product pages. Instead of showing if and when a product will ship near the right add to cart tile, it was moved towards above the product description. Some weeks later, we discovered that this change was rejected in favor of showing the same information in the top right. View Leak
Booking Sticks To A Traditional Breadcrumb After Rejecting A Multi-Dimensional One
Booking ran a sitewide experiment where they tested two types of breadcrumb navigation. The contending variation showed a breadcrumb with two dimensions: displaying the geographical hierarchy of how deep someone is within the site (as expected), and also displaying a menu (on-click) with a secondary dimension of stay types for each level. It might have seemed like a nice idea but it didn't cut it. As the a/b test completed, the idea was rejected in favor of the old-school breadcrumb approach. Nice try booking. :) View Leak
Zalando Rejects Black Add-To-Cart Buttons
Zalando has run a simple experiment on their product page where they challenged their existing orange add-to-cart button against a black one. One month later, the black button was rejected even though the black one had a higher contrast ratio. View Leak
Airbnb Discovers A Better Way To Display Customer Ratings In This A/B Test
In this tiny and well isolated experiment, Airbnb tried a slightly different approach to displaying customer ratings on their property (product) pages. From the observed implementation decision one month later, we learned that using decimal places for customer rating averages seems to be the better approach. :) View Leak
Amazon's Beautifully Designed And Failed Three vs. Two Column Layout Experiment
Amazon found the courage to run a beautiful a/b test where they put their old three column product page layout against a new two column one. Although the two column layout was arguably more beautiful with the addition of white space, margins and shadows, it was nevertheless rejected. Before it was removed we decided to leak it here to ensure its beautiful failure continues to teach us well into the future. View Leak
Airbnb A/B Tests And Rejects Full Height Photos On Their Landing Page
Airbnb ran an experiment where they increased the size of the header photo on their Host signup landing page. And interestingly it was rejected a month later. View Leak