Experimental Mind: summer time with Lucia van den Brink
😎 Summer time with Lucia van den Brink
About: Lucia built her first webshop when she was 11 years old and has continued to build in-depth experience in data, statistics, UX, content, frontend development, qualitative research, and psychology. She has more than 5 years of experience optimizing high-traffic environments with millions of visitors and scaling up experimentation programs to 100+ tests a year. In her spare time she writes literary fiction (in Dutch) and she is a former karate champion. ➤ Follow on LinkedIn
Is it simply work as normal or do you slow down?
I'm a person that believes in the power of habits. Every day I walk one hour on the beach during lunchtime. Covid changed my life and my remote job (at experimentation agency Speero) made me able to live anywhere I wanted, and so I moved from Amsterdam to a small village in The Netherlands, 400 meters from the beach. And just like results from A/B-tests some beach days are great (winners!), some are terrible with a lot of wind and rain (losers!) and most days are gray and just okay (non-significant). I love how the beach is different every day.
Do you have any trips planned?
I'm planning a trip to Greece, but only in September. I will partially work from there as well. Where I live is the best place to stay during summer. During winters I flee the country to a warmer place.
Are you reading any interesting books?
Last year I read 80 books, that's about 1,5 books every week. When I go on holiday I turn from physical copies to ebooks, because I cannot carry the weight of all that paper! This summer I plan on reading Tiny Habits from BJ Fogg, because sometimes I do refer to his models, but I have not read his full work yet (shame on me!). With the Speero Bookclub we're reading The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics from Tim Harford, and it turned out a surprisingly fun and interesting read. Another book that has fascinated me this year is Atomic Habits from James Clear.
On my to-be-read pile is also some fiction. Works of Clarice Lispector (Brazilian writer) and I have read everything from the French Édouard Louis, except his newest book Change: Method. For me, reading fiction is a great way of understanding psychology. You get insights into the narrative of other people's minds, in a way that movies or series often can't.
This summer it just so happens to be that people are also reading my book. I've published my second literary novel in Dutch which is getting quite some attention. It's really amazing that my book goes on holiday with people, it feels like they take a part of me with them.
Making time to learn a new skill?
What’s on my list is learning how to use GA4 better (using this free Linkedin course and this CXL course).
Next to that, I want to watch the CXL course Data Presentation & Visualization, I’ve heard it’s a good one.
How are you preparing for the second half of 2022?
First of all: I have to make sure that during everyone's holidays, the experimentation programs of my clients are still running smooth and healthy. The summer for me is not necessarily a time to reflect, but might as well be, because it's always time to reflect. At Speero we continuously look for how to add more value to the client. How can we help them grow, make sure our point-of-contact shines when they tell the story about an A/B-test, and get acknowledgment of their work? But also: how can we make the program better, are there things we can do with data that we are not doing now? Can I help my team grow and teach something to perform better?
Trying out something new (personal experiment)?
I'm recording a talk for Experiment Nation on How to change the habits of visitors with server-side testing. It's my first time being on an online stage like that, and it's testing my video editing skills!
Next to that I’m picking up gardening, and I’ve already harvested a lot of veggies. What I’ve learned is that killing weeds and keeping the soil clean for the plants that I want to grow, is hard work! (yes, this is a hidden metaphor)
Also, I've started a fun project building a CRO master checklist 🚀 for all optimizations I've done for eComms which got confirmed with A/B-tests multiple times for different brands. It has helped me think about the patterns of winning tests. Plus, for small websites that can't A/B-test, it can be a place to start.
And for a few months now I’m mentoring someone in CRO and I sometimes help out small websites with questions they might have about conversion optimization. I thought this would make me really busy (and it does), but most of all it’s helping me learn and grow too!
Thank you Lucia for sharing these insights.
Follow her here on Linkedin.
🚀 Job opportunities
All of the featured roles this week:
Backend Engineer Experimentation at Spotify (remote, EMEA)
CRO Specialist at Albert Heijn (Zaandam, NL)
Senior Data Scientist at Farfetch (Lisbon, Portugal)
Digital Analyst at RTL (Hilversum, NL)
Marketing Analyst at Kaartje2go (Zwolle, NL)
Check out the job board to find other open roles.
📅 Upcoming events
In three weeks time Ronny Kohavi's class Accelerating Innovation with A/B Testing starts. I already know a couple of people who are also joining, would be great to see more familiar faces and together learn from Ronny's wealth of knowledge.
All upcoming events in the next months:
22 Aug: Accelerating Innovation with A/B Testing (virtual)
20-23 Sep: Nonprofit Innovation & Optimization Summit (Kansas)
20-21 Sep: Marketing Insights Event (Utrecht, NL
26-30 Sep: Experiment Nation Conference (virtual)
25-26 Oct: CXL Live (Austin, Texas)
See the full overview of events to find other events and conferences for you and your team.
🙏 Thanks for reading
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Have a great week — and keep experimenting.
Kevin