After an especially challenging Easter and Passover season, God announced that He has started using Test & Target to optimize Creation. A long time Omniture client, sources say that He finally chose the leading A/B Testing and Personalization platform because it is the one remaining Omniture product not running His divine Universe.
The author believes this interview was divinely inspired after accidentally eating a Kouing Aman right after Thai food at Adobe Summit 2012:
Me: When did you decide that it was time to start A/B Testing the Universe?
God: Hey man…the idea hit me like a bolt of lightening on Passover. Every year we remember the ten plagues I inflicted on the ancient Egyptians. I just thought “whoa…those plagues were expensive man…what if I had done some A/B testing beforehand and learned that I only needed like three to convince Pharaoh to let my people go?” Then I realized that it’s time to optimize…
Me: What has been the greatest challenge for you in adopting Test & Target?
God: <Pause>
Me: Um…the greatest challenge?
God: Sorry man…I had to tweet like a few hundred million followers just now…clay tablets just don’t cut it anymore. The greatest challenge? Well the sales guy said I just needed to add a line of code across Creation. Truth is that my IT department told me it would take about 60 million years to mBox everything…and then QA it to avoid another mass extinction.
Me: “Another” mass extinction?!
God: We had to run everything server-side in the early days…man I feel bad about the dinosaurs…and let me tell you I wish we had tag management back then. Do you have any freakin’ idea how hard it is to keep track of every animal on Earth? Anyway…everything was server side. Now it’s in the clouds…I love it man…I invented Cloud Power in the first place!
Me: So what did you do about the mBox challenge?
God: We just chose to mBox the most important areas of Creation…you know…like churches…temples…Yosemite…most of the remaining Jewish delis…Verve coffee in Santa Cruz…and the whole state of Kansas.
Me: What did you test first?
God: We made the usual mistakes…I had this really complex test in mind and it took forever to setup and ended up a technical failure.
Me: What happened?
God: We accidentally replaced the Pope with a Platypus. Fortunately I shut off the Campaign immediately…strangely there didn’t seem to be any major impact to Conversion. So then we decided to start with the easy stuff…some basic existence testing to see what really mattered.
Me: What did you learn?
God: Lets just say that coffee and sushi really matter. People freak out if Yosemite isn’t there after a four hour drive and unholy traffic. Kansas…not so much.
Me: So what’s next? What’s in the test pipeline?
God: We are on track to start our first multivariate test this summer…we’re going to really mix things up and see which elements work. All I can say at this point is…look out Kansas….there may be a rainforest in your near future!