Discover UI Design Decisions Of Leading Companies,
From Leaked Screenshots & A/B Tests.

In this experiment Booking added a second search bar on their homepage. The intention might have been to provide users a way to filter more destinations by country. Could this scenario have created an akward uncertainty about which form field to engage with? Whether this explanation is true or not, I'm not sure. What we do know however that in the end, the control version with the single search bar prevailed.  View Leak

Once upon a time, Netflix had asked users to enter their email address far down in the signup flow. The email field appeared after a user moved from the hompage, through a series of confirmation steps, and a plan selection - what might officially be counted as the fifth step. All this was challenged with the following experiment where the email field was placed right at the forefront. More so, it also looks like this changed generated some positive impact as it was also rolled out. View Leak

Etsy just completed a cascade experiment with 3 version of their global search bar. Interestingly the cascaded version with all inherited changes, took the lead. View Leak

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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