The SamSam Ransomware That Hit Atlanta Will Strike Again

Atlanta isn't the SamSam ransomware strain's first victim—and it won't be the last.

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Tech Tools to Help With Hand and Arm Injuries

For those who have recently injured or lost their dominant hand, everything from apps to bungees exist to ease the frustration.

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This Week in the Future of Cars: Back to Normal?

A ban for Uber, a challenge to Tesla, and Jaguars for Waymo.

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RSS Readers Are Due for a Comeback: Feedly, The Old Reader, Inoreader

After years of letting algorithms make up our minds for us, the time is right to go back to basics.

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Ocean Acidification Could Be a Net Positive for Some Fish

Baby herring adapt to extra carbon dioxide in the water; cod and clams, not so much.

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A Short History of Mark Zuckerberg's Privacy Gaffes at Facebook

Facebook has been updating its privacy settings for more than a decade. Will this time be different?

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Crispr’d Food, Coming Soon to a Supermarket Near You

This week the USDA announced it has no plans to regulate gene-editing technologies like Crispr, opening the door to a boom in designer foods.

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OK, We Need to Talk About 'Ready Player One'

Was the movie everything we hoped it would be? Two WIRED editors (and proud ’80s kids) hash things out.

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Learn How to Fold a World-Record-Setting Paper Airplane

John Collins shows you how to fold the innovative paper airplane design that earned him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records.

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Facebook's Election Safeguards Are Still a Work in Progress

The social media giant Thursday outlined several attempts to help protect the midterm elections, but still has a long way to go.

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Jaguar's New F-Pace SUV Is Fast, Sporty, and Expensive

It goes from 0 to 60 in 4.1 seconds, and it has fatter tires and updated aerodynamics to match.

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You Can Model China’s Tiangong-1 Space Station Crash

When and where will the Chinese space station land? We can’t know for sure—but we can examine some variables.

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Some Frogs May Be Developing a Chytrid Fungus Resistance

Certain frog species are rebounding after a fungal invasion, probably not because the fungus got any less deadly—the frogs may be evolving to resist the pathogen.

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Pinterest Adds New 'People You Follow' Tab to Your Feed

The new "following" tab shows you pins from people you follow in reverse-chronological order.

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Photographing a Robot Isn't Just Point and Shoot

Photographer Giulio di Sturco's latest subject is a humanoid named Sophia—and capturing her essence took time.

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Georgia criminalizes routine security research

Georgia is a hub for cybersecurity research, with leading university computer science and security programs and a new $35m state cybersecurity research center underway; but the Georgia state legislature just passed SB315, the most onerous prohibition on computer security research ever passed in the USA. (more…)

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Mac OS update adds support for fancy external video cards

Matt Burns at TechCrunch:

"The additional horsepower isn’t needed for general use, but the added graphics cards supercharge Macs for VR rendering and gaming. Only a handful of eGPUs are compatible with macOS so choose carefully before adding one to your rig."

The AMD Radeon RX 580 is the best card for games on the compatibility list, but most of the eGPU boxes are pretty bulky. Your best best is probably the Sonnet Box, which is the smallest and comes with an RX 570 built in (with a cheaper RX 560 option). The caveat is that it doesn't have USB-C output, so you can't put it between a Mac and the LG UltraFine monitors that Apple actually sells. Other eGPU boxes have this feature.

This will probably go unheralded but I think it's a huge milestone in Mac history: serious game support! Finally!

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'The Unbitten Elbow' by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Reader recommended, and absolutely delightful, The Unbitten Elbow depicts the fervor and zelotry of the Soviet state as it rots from the brain to the heart.

Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky is another fantastic Soviet era writer of dystopic fiction. Folks in Russia were already living in the worst dystopia most Westerners could imagine. In The Unbitten Elbow, we see an old Russian proverb, that the elbow is always near but impossible to bite, tested by the strength of an entire nation.

Absurdity abounds in this 10-15 minute read.

The Unbitten Elbow by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky via Amazon

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California coffee cups to get cancer warning

The National Coffee Association failed to demonstrate that a known-carcinogen produced during the coffee brewing process is not harmful. A judge in the Bear Republic ruled coffee cups need to carry a warning.

Via the NYT:

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed in 2010 by the Council for Education and Research on Toxics, a nonprofit group based in Long Beach. The group charged that Starbucks and other companies — a group that eventually included 91 defendants — did not warn consumers that ingesting coffee would expose them to acrylamide, a chemical formed when coffee beans are roasted.

California keeps a list of chemicals it considers to cause cancer or reproductive harm, and acrylamide has been included since 1990. The state’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, known as Proposition 65 after it was passed in 1986, requires businesses to provide warning labels when exposing consumers to any of the hundreds of chemicals listed.

Judge Elihu M. Berle, in Los Angeles County Superior Court, wrote in a proposed decision on Wednesday that the companies failed to show that acrylamide does not pose a significant risk when produced during the coffee roasting process.

“Since defendants failed to prove that coffee confers any human health benefits, defendants have failed to satisfy their burden of proving that sound considerations of public health support an alternate risk level for acrylamide in coffee,” the judge wrote.

https://youtu.be/1azwQxMaTxE

Barry's Gold Blend tea merely invokes an existential crisis. Drink Barry's.

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Trump administration will require every visitor to the USA to divulge all social media identities

Today, the US State Department published a notice in the Federal Register seeking comment on a plan to require 15,000,000+ foreigners who get a US visitor visa to disclose all their social media identities as a condition of entry. (more…)

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What do you call someone who derives pleasure from the bread of affliction?

What do you call someone who derives pleasure from the bread of affliction?

A matzochist.

###

Why do we have a Haggadah at Passover?

So we can Seder right words.

Share your own in the comments! Happy Passover!

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How to fold World Record-setting paper airplanes

John "The Paper Airplane Guy" Collins shows us how to fold "Suzanne," the aircraft that set a 2012 world record for flying 69.14 meters.

"I bring paper airplanes into classrooms and start talking about complicated ideas involved with fluid dynamics and using paper airplanes to explain it," Collins told Wired. "If you can have a group of middle schoolers and high schoolers that don't look at their phones for 45 minutes while you're doing a demonstration, you've hit success," he says.

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Facebook deathwatch: a decade ago, it was impossible to imagine the fall of Myspace

In 2007, the Guardian's Victor Keegan published "Will MySpace ever lose its monopoly?" in which he enumerated the unbridgeable moats and unscalable walls that "Rupert Murdoch's Myspace" had erected around itself, evaluating all the contenders to replace Myspace and finding them wanting. (more…)

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Referendums and low-engagement voters produce catastrophic outcomes (but what about corruption?)

The idea of representative democracy is that we pay lawmakers to give serious attention to the nuances of policy questions and cast votes on our behalf in accord with their understanding of our preferences, applied to those nuanced understandings. (more…)

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This is the first 3D visualization of a melting snowflake

Developed by Jussi Leinonen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, this is a visualization of the first ever 3D model of a snowflake melting in the atmosphere. Eventually, a deep understanding of how snow actually melts could "help scientists recognize the signature in radar signals of heavier, wetter snow -- the kind that breaks power lines and tree limbs -- and could be a step toward improving predictions of this hazard." From JPL:

Leinonen's model reproduces key features of melting snowflakes that have been observed in nature. First, meltwater gathers in any concave regions of the snowflake's surface. These liquid-water regions then merge to form a shell of liquid around an ice core, and finally develop into a water drop. The modeled snowflake shown in the video is less than half an inch (one centimeter) long and composed of many individual ice crystals whose arms became entangled when they collided in midair.

"NASA Visualizes the Dance of a Melting Snowflake" (JPL)

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Oklahoma teachers walk out, sensing weakness from GOP legislators who caved on taxing the oil industry

Oklahoma teachers will walk out en masse this coming Monday, despite a historic agreement from the ailing state legislature to give them a long-overdue pay raise which will be paid for by increasing taxes on the state's previously untouchable oil and gas industry. (more…)

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Five years after Google conquered and abandoned RSS, the news-reader ecosystem is showing green shoots

RSS was a revelation for blogging and online media; we got our first RSS feed in 2001 and I have relied heavily on RSS feeds to write this site (and stay informed) for nearly two decades now; in 2005, Google bet heavily on RSS with its Google Reader product, which quickly eclipsed every other reader, so that by the time they killed it in 2013, there wasn't anything sophisticated, robust and well-maintained to switch to. (more…)

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"Kingpin: The Hunt for El Chapo": Game designers review the CIA's declassified tabletop training game

Douglas Palmer got wind of a classified CIA program to create board games to train spies, so he used a series of Freedom of Information Act requests to get copies of two of these games: the first is called "Kingpin: The Hunt for El Chapo" and the second (which the CIA revealed to a SXSW audience in 2017) is called "Collection Deck." (more…)

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Learn Python for a price that works for you

Hailed for its versatility and user-friendly design, Python is one of the best first languages for aspiring programmers to learn. However, not all of us have a natural affinity for programming, but you can get the training you need without breaking the bank thanks to the Pay What You Want: Absolute Python Bundle.

Here's how the deal works: Simply pay what you want, and you'll unlock one of the collection's five courses. Beat the average price paid, and you'll get the remaining four at no extra charge. Plus, if you beat the top price, you'll be entered into a major giveaway and earn a spot on the leaderboard.

Featuring nearly 60 hours of training, this collection will take you from beginner to expert in Python programming. You'll follow along with the collection's example-based curriculum, taking on core concepts, like input, functions, lists, and loops. Then, you'll dive into more advanced ideas, like automation framework design and creating deep learning models.

You can catalyze your Python education for a price you choose with the Pay What You Want: Absolute Python Bundle. 

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When Joan Rivers and Martha Stewart decorated matzo houses for Passover

The late-great comedienne Joan Rivers was a frequent guest on Martha Stewart's daytime show. One year for Passover, they built gingerbread-like houses with sheets of matzo and decorated them with other kosher foods including macaroons, chocolate, dried fruits, and nuts. Such a cute idea!

Watch: https://youtu.be/V9rTS8yNziI

Happy Pesach to those of you out there who celebrate!

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Confession: You can't trust a junkie with a new laptop

There's still plenty of life left in my 2015 MacBook Pro. But sooner or later, I'll ditch my computer in favor something new.

The nerd in me is wicked excited with the notion of using an ultra light laptop with an external graphics processor, for several reasons. I've always wanted to own a gaming laptop, but I could never justify the price, or the weight of one in my bag. Going with a computer that can connect to an external GPU means that I could invest in the laptop first, and then the GPU when I could afford it. And since the GPU for the rig is external, I wouldn't be forced to carry around a heavy bastard of a computer with me every time I needed to take off on assignment. That said, I was hesitant to buy one without seeing how it'd perform, first and foremost, as a work machine. I really like the look of the Razer Blade Stealth: the laptop's industrial design is what Apple might have come up with if their design department had a shred of edge or attitude. So, relying on the privilege of my position as a tech journalist, I asked Razer if I could borrow one.

They said yes.

I spent the past month working on Razer's insanely well-built ultrabook. It was pimped out with 16GB of dual channel RAM, and an Intel Core i7 2.70Ghz processor. It's zippy! But then, that's in comparison to my daily driver: a three year old Core i5 with 8GB of RAM. The Razer Blade Stealth is an easy machine to fall in love with. It feels as solid built as any Apple laptop I've ever used. I'd argue that, subjectively, it feels better to pick up and carry than any other portable computer that I've handled. There's something really satisfying about its weight. There's a decent number of ports for connecting to legacy hardware, HDMI for using it with an external display and a USB C/thunderbolt port for charging it and, yes, connecting to an external GPU rig.

I found myself quickly getting attached to this thing, and hating myself for it. As I used it, I attempted to rationalize why I should buy it.

The usual suspects filled my head: I deserve nice things. It'd be good for my work. Gaming helps to manage some of my PTSD symptoms. Yadda yadda yadda. It's a series of excuses that I feed myself, often. Buying new shit gives me a quick rush of endorphins. Consumerism and booze (especially where it concerns buying booze!) have long been my drugs of choice.

Last week, I made the decision to box the Razer Blade Stealth back up. This week, I ask Razer to send me a return shipping label. I need to get it out of the house as we'll be traveling north to spend our summer in Canada soon. Shipping it back means one less thing that I don't own will be in our RV home for customs to scrutinize when we cross the border. But more than this, I needed it out of my life. Using it made me feel too good, too quickly. When you're an addict, of any kind, it's easy to be roped into accepting the monkeys that long to cling to your back. A new computer. Too much drink. Both result in too little money on hand, for me at least. That I have a job that allows me access to all the shiny things in the world makes it that much worse. It's a path that's led me to some dark places in my past. I've no interest of going there again.

As for the rest of you, if you're looking for a solid ultrabook that can handle work and some hella heavy gaming with the use of an external GPU, the Razer Blade Stealth is amazing. But until the computer I currently own dies or becomes too old to use, I'll have to go without it.

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Earthworm jerky exists, unfortunately

Today on "WTH is Walmart trying to sell my friend Terry through a Facebook ad"**: Earthworm Jerky. (Last time it was funeral potatoes.)

At first, I thought he was pulling my leg. But he's not one to joke about stuff like this:

Reviews are poor for these "100% edible dehydrated large earthworms" in a "spicy marinade," so I don't recommend buying them:

**I have to think that the-store-that-no-longer-shall-be-named is advertising weird items to draw some attention (after all, negative attention is still attention). Good job, it worked. I feel right into their trap. I'm sending all their "earthworm jerky" traffic to Amazon though.

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People from 70 countries imitate the sounds cats and dogs make

Not everyone around the world agrees that cats say "meow" and that dogs "woof." Watch in this Conde Nast Traveler video as 70 people from 70 countries share their interpretation of how pets sound. I feel like all these sounds should be incorporated into a song or something.

(Blame it on the Voices)

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Patti Smith 'Horses' concert documentary announced

In 2015, Patti Smith went on tour with her band to celebrate the 40th anniversary of her debut album, Horses. Now it's been announced that a new documentary titled Horses: Patti Smith and her Band has been made using footage of the tour's final gig at Los Angeles' Wiltern Theater.

In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2014, the then 67-year-old said,

"I think we continue to deliver all of these songs sometimes stronger than when I was young... So I'm going to be happy to celebrate it, to perform the album with happiness, not with any kind of cynicism or a cashing-in thing. It will be a true, proud celebration, so the answer is yes."

I attended one of the three sold-out shows at The Fillmore in San Francisco in early 2015 and can attest that it was a strong performance. The 1975 album was performed in its entirety, in sequence, and Patti rocked the whole show hard.

The new film was directed by Steven Sebring and executive produced by record producer Jimmy Iovine. It premieres April 23 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. After the screening, Smith and her band will perform some songs, including the album's title track.

(PAPER)

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Will Smith gets friendzoned by Sophia the human-like robot

Sophia is an advanced social robot in her second year of development by Hanson Robotics. In this video, she's on a date in the Cayman Islands with actor Will Smith. He turns on the charm, goes in for a kiss but is immediately, awkwardly friendzoned by her.

Last year Sophia was on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon with her creator, former Imagineer Dr. David Hanson. On it, she tells Jimmy a joke and then plays Rock, Paper, Scissors with him: https://youtu.be/Bg_tJvCA8zw?t=2m20s

P.S. You can follow Sophia on Instagram! I just did. https://ift.tt/2pRKzgs

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Watch Carrie Fisher slap the pretty right off of Oscar Issac's face

A lot of Star Wars fans were butt hurt over the Last Jedi's treatment of iconic Star Wars characters. Others, not so much--I'm one of those. I think it was a fun film that pushed the franchise forward in a new and interesting direction. No matter which camp you fall into, there's one thing that we can all agree on: Watching Carrie Fisher slap the silly shit out of Oscar Isaac over and over will always be entertaining.

While I'm not crazy about sharing anything from Entertainment Tonight, damn this is fun.

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Pope won't apologize for brutal treatment of Indigenous Canadians

For more than a century, the Canadian government was responsible for perpetuating horrendous abuses against native peoples who were unfortunate enough to be living in an area where a imperial colonialist power decided to set up shop. It was government policy for Indigenous children to be separated from their families, the without the permission of their parents or tribal elders, and them into what were known as residential schools: institutions predominantly run by the Catholic Church, along with a small handful of schools that were handled by Anglican, Presbyterian and United Church interests.

Once the kids were secured into these boarding schools, they were taught the 'right' way to live--right being in accordance to western culture. Were the incarcerated children to dare to speak their own language or act according to cultural norms outside of what their white caretakers felt was 'civilized,' they were met with severe corporal punishment. Mortality rates at the schools were high. So were instances of physical and emotional abuse. Children were often buried in unmarked graves or simply disappeared. Even after the last residential school closed in 1998, its legacy of hate and abuse remains.

In 2015, Canada finally confessed to its part in this long-running crime. The nation's Truth and Reconciliation Commission looked to the crimes of the residential school system, saying that they amounted to cultural genocide. The commission made 94 recommendations that it felt would go along ways towards righting the wrongs of the past. One those recommendations was that the Pope step forward and apologize for his church's role in the residential school system. It makes sense: the bulk of the schools were operated by the Catholic Church. There's precedent for it, too: in the past, Popes have apologized for other shitty things that the church has done.

Last May, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a personal appeal to Pope Francis, asking him for an apology, on behalf of all Canadians. The pope's response?

Nope.

From the New York Times:

“The Holy Father is aware of the findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which he takes seriously,” Bishop Lionel Gendron, who is president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote in an open letter to Canada’s Indigenous people released on Tuesday. “After carefully considering the request and extensive dialogue with the Bishops of Canada, he felt that he could not personally respond.”

It wouldn't have been the first time that a pope's apologized for the church's bullshit. As the New York Times points out, Pope Benedict XVI apologized for the decades of sexual abuse that many Catholic priests heaped on members of their flock in Ireland, back in 2010. More recently, Pope Francis asked for forgiveness for the church's role in the Rwandan genocide. Thousands were killed during that one. Maybe the problem with apologizing for what went on in the residential schools is that around 80,000 people who were forced to attend them are still alive. Admitting culpability through apology could open the doors to one hell of a class action lawsuit against the Church.

The Pope's got a trip to Canada planned in the near future. Apparently, meeting with native politicians and tribal elders will be a priority. I guess we'll see what happens.

Image via Wikipedia Commons

 

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Adnan Sayed of the Serial podcast wins right to a new trial

As listeners of the Serial podcast know, Adnan Syed was a Baltimore, Maryland high school student sentenced to life in prison for the 1999 murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. Now, he's getting a new trial. From Rolling Stone:

Syed's conviction was overturned in June 2016 by retired Circuit Court judge Martin Welch, but the Attorney General's Office quickly appealed the ruling. Today's decision affirms Syed's right to a new trial, but based on an issue that the Circuit Court had considered and ultimately rejected – that Syed's trial attorney had demonstrated "deficient performance" and "prejudiced Syed's defense" by failing to pursue alibi witness Asia McClain...

(The Maryland Court of Special Appeals') decision comes down to this: "Syed's murder conviction must be vacated, and because Syed's convictions for kidnapping, robbery, and false imprisonment are predicated on his commission of Hae's murder, these convictions must be vacated as well. The instant case will be remanded for a new trial on all charges against Syed."

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Watch a cheetah jump into vehicle during a safari

"A cheetah decided to explore our vehicle on a safari I was leading for Grand Ruaha Safaris (in the Serengeti National Park," wrote wildlife photographer Peter Heistein on Instagram. "Another one jumped up on the hood and was staring at us through the windshield. They were just curious, we kept calm and let them go about their business. Quite a thrill to be this close!

"Our guide Alex Mnyangabe... helped us through the encounter with instructions on how to treat the animal 'with respect.'"

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Help crowdfund the Harlem Cryptoparty and 100 unlimited, privacy-protecting wifi hotspots for Puerto Rico

https://ift.tt/2Ieb9I2

Calyx is an amazing nonprofit, privacy-oriented activist ISP (they were the first ISP to successfully resist a secret Patriot Act warrant); they are notable for offering an unlimited, unfiltered, unthrottled 4G/wifi hotspot for a tax-deductible $400 year (mine has repeatedly saved my bacon). (more…)

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Watch this bizarre Komputer Tutor supercut of the phrase "floppy diskette"

An absurd and wonderful example of semantic satiation, starring the "Komputer Tutor" Kim Komando, best known for her bestselling 1990s instructional videos sold via infomericial. And in case you were wondering, Kim Komando is still at it!

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Hacking particle accelerators for unexpected science

As advanced atom smashers like the Large Hadron Collider come online, older ones are sometimes abandoned or, better, used for unexpected science experiments. Examples range from recording high-speed X-rays of the biological "motor" that flaps a fly's wings to finding an easter egg in a Degas painting. In the video above, Science Hack Day "global instigator" Ariel Waldman reveals how researchers hack particle accelerators for new uses.

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Science determines mysterious source of that knuckle cracking sound

There are bubbles in your joint fluid that POP! when a joint is "cracked."

Via Phys.org

Using a mathematical model alongside a geometrical representation of the joint, experts from Paris' Ecole Polytechnique and Stanford University in the United States simulated the events leading up to the crack.

"The sound that is generated when one cracks his or her knuckles is due to the partial collapse of a cavitation bubble that's in the fluid in the joint," explained Abdul Barakat, a professor at the Ecole Polytechnique.

"It could be multiple bubbles, but we showed that the collapse of a single bubble is sufficient to give you the signature sound you get," he told AFP by phone.

Every joint in my body makes noise.

Image via Vecteezy

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Timely video about "dark patterns," the tricks websites use to manipulate you

If you've tried to delete your Facebook account and found yourself mysteriously lost and frustrated, welcome to the world of Dark Patterns, the website and app trickery designed to make you agree to things or otherwise fool you into doing something other than you intend.

The video uses closing an Amazon account as an example. It's essentially impossible: even if you find the one deceptively-titled link three layers down through the most irrelevant-seeming menu options on the site, all it gives you is a generic "live chat" window. You cannot close your account without a fundamentally adversarial interaction with a person whose job depends on stopping you.

Pictured here, though, is something this week from Facebook, promising "text anyone in your phone" but really a ruse to let the company track your phone calls and texts--a fact you might be able to figure out from the tiny, unreadable silver-on-white text it doesn't want you to read.

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Throw out metal grill brushes, say doctors

The sharp, thin metal bristles of grill brushes end up in your food and then in your throat, from where there is "no surefire way of removing them," say surgeons. Throw them out.

That was the case for Lisa Wadden two years ago. The Dartmouth, N.S., woman ate a burger her husband had barbecued and noticed something pierce her throat.

"Every swallow, it just was this crazy pain, burning," she said.

"It was like I was being poked again with it every single time that I swallowed."

X-rays showed Wadden had swallowed a thin wire about 1.5 centimetres long, which had become embedded in her throat.

Over four months, she had multiple CT scans, X-rays, scopes and two unsuccessful attempts to remove it through surgery. Dempsey, who was Wadden's otolaryngologist, told her it was best to wait for scar tissue to build up around the wire and lessen the pain.

Get yourself a grill stone at Amazon, folks. Or if that's too rustic for you, one of these fancy copper scrapers.

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How to Use Continuous AB Testing to Increase Conversions

When was the last time you updated your website?

If you have to stop and think for a minute to answer that question, you may have a problem. Your website needs to be monitored and updated on a regular basis.

However, you don’t want to make changes without any rhyme or reason. That’s why you can use A/B testing as a tool to help guide your website updates.

But before you start A/B testing, you need to understand how it works. It’s not just a one-time thing. Some of you may have tried these tests in the past and seen an improvement. So why did you stop?

For those of you who have never tried A/B testing, it can be difficult to know where to get started. Regardless of your situation and experience with A/B testing, I can help you out.

Continuous A/B testing will make your website more efficient.

I’ll explain how you can use this strategy to improve your business and help you boost your conversion rates.

How A/B testing works

A/B testing isn’t really that difficult of a concept to understand. You start by creating a hypothesis about a certain element and then run a test to see if your theory was right.

To do this, you create two different versions of your website. Then half of your site traffic will get sent to one version, and the other half gets directed to the variation.

Here’s a visual representation to give you a better understanding of what I’m talking about.

Once you set up the test, you wait and see which variation has higher conversion rates. Then you draw conclusions and update your website with the version that converts the most.

What’s tricky about A/B testing is deciding how long to test things and what elements need to be tested.

Honestly, there’s not one right answer to those questions. But I’ll give you some guidance to help you run these tests efficiently.

Test your CTA buttons

When you’re trying to get higher conversions, it’s best to start with the button that gets people to convert.

Obviously, these buttons are different for each company in every industry. It depends on your goal on a specific landing page as well. Some of you may be trying to drive a sale while others may be trying to get site visitors opt-in to their email subscription list.

The key here is just picking one element to start. You don’t want to test two theories at once. Testing multiple hypotheses doesn’t give you conclusive results because you won’t know which variation impacted the results.

That’s why you should be running tests continuously to maximize the efficiency.

Start with something subtle and easy such as the size, color, or placement of your CTA button. For example, you could hypothesize that a larger CTA button will have higher conversions.

You can also test the actual text written on your CTA button. Try testing power words against action words.

Here are some of the power words that convert the most.

Are any of these words currently used in your call-to-action?

Here are some more statistics about the conversion success of words that entice an action.

Based on the numbers in these graphics, you could hypothesize that a call to action that says, “Sign up for free” will have higher conversion rates than one that says, “Download now.”

But there’s only one way to find out. Test it.

After you test one of these and you’re satisfied with the results, move on to another. So if you started with the size of your CTA button, then move on to the color. After that, you can test the text or placement.

Test all of the CTAs this way on each page of your website.

Less than half of websites have a CTA button that can be spotted in less than 3 seconds. So putting so much effort into testing your CTA will definitely give you an edge over your competitors.

Evaluate your headings

After you’re satisfied with your CTA button analysis, move on to other components of your website that stand out the most.

Your headlines and subheadings definitely jump off of the page at visitors, so it makes sense to test those next.

If your headlines aren’t worded properly, visitors may not even read all of the content on the page. So while testing the CTA may seem more important, visitors could miss out on your entire value proposition if the headers don’t keep them engaged.

In addition to conversions, you should be looking at analytics that shows how long each visitor stays on the page for.

If one headline causes the average page viewing time to be significantly longer than the variation, it will definitely increase the chances that the visitors will convert.

Here’s an example of an A/B test on a website’s headline.

As you can see, the two pages are identical, except for the headlines. The variation has different words for the main heading and subhead.

The test yielded conclusive results. Website visitors who saw version A filled out the form at a 27.76% higher rate than the ones who saw version B.

If your tests are only within 5% or so if each other, you may not be able to say that one is definitely better. To find out for sure, you can run an A/A test before your A/B test to see what your standard deviation is between the same version of a web page.

Improve your checkout process

For those of you with an ecommerce website, you need to find ways to minimize shopping cart abandonment.

Using A/B tests on the layout of your checkout process can really help you maximize conversions. You’ll be able to tell which elements are working and which ones can be tossed away.

I’ll give you some ideas of what you can start testing.

Are you accepting coupon codes? If you have an option for visitors to input a coupon code during the checkout process, it could cause them to go searching for a code.

But if these codes aren’t always readily available and they’re just something you use to offer a disgruntled customer, it shouldn’t be a primary element of your checkout process.

Test it out to see what kind of results you get.

You could also test a guest checkout vs. login to checkout conversion rates. I’m assuming you’re offering a secure checkout, so use A/B tests to see if the size and placement of your security badges have an impact on conversions.

Test every element on the page. You’d be surprised at how something small could make a huge difference.

Here’s a great example of something subtle that iHerb used to when A/B testing their checkout process.

Take a look at the left side of the screen. They have a shipping cost calculator. All the customer has to do is input their zip code and they’ll get an estimate on their shipping costs.

But the heavy-duty bag promotion draws lots of attention away from the calculator.

Here’s another version of that same page.

As you can see, the image was removed and the “Calculate” button was placed much closer to the “Proceed to Checkout” CTA.

OK. So technically they changed two elements of this page, which I know I said you shouldn’t do. But this was subtle enough to be effective.

I’m a big advocate for removing clutter from your pages, so I think it was a smart decision to get rid of the image in addition to moving the placement of the calculator.

Find out which images convert

You definitely want to use images to help you improve your website. But it’s just a matter of what images to use and where to place them.

If you’re on the fence about a decision, or you have some images already in place on your website, run A/B tests to see which ones have the highest conversion rates.

For example, you could test an image of a man vs. an image of a woman to see if one yields different results. Or you could test an image of the same model, but with different facial expressions, such as smiling vs. a serious face.

Is it better to have one big image as the background of your website? Or will a white background with the image in the forefront have higher conversions?

The only way to find out for sure is by testing your theory.

You should also consider the size and position of your images in relationship to other elements of your website.

Continuously run these tests to maximize your conversion rates.

For example, let’s say you find out that a photo of a man converts higher than a photo of a woman. Now you’ve got to find the most optimal position of that photo on the page, so your tests will continue.

Test different color schemes

Colors can make a huge impact on how people see your website. That’s because certain colors have a psychological impact on our mind.

We’re programmed to associate certain colors with things. For example, but what color does everyone wear to a funeral? I’m not trying to sound grim, but that’s one of the reasons why we automatically associate the color black with death.

Test colors for every component of your website, such as the color of the text, the menu icons, and CTA buttons.

Here’s an example that tests the colors of the call-to-action on this website.

The pages are identical, including the text. The only thing that’s been changed is the color. Refer back to what I said earlier about our minds automatically associating certain colors with things.

Well, we’re programmed to go on green and stop on red. So a valid hypothesis for this A/B test would be that a green CTA button will have higher conversions than the red one.

Use A/B tests to improve your emails

Everything we’ve discussed so far is based around your website. But that’s not the only platform that you use to get conversions.

A/B testing is not limited to your website. You can also test factors from your email marketing campaigns.

Test things similar to what we’ve already talked about. Focus on your CTA, colors, images, headings, and text.

But with email, you can test other factors as well.

For example, use A/B testing on your email subject lines. The content of your message can be the same, but see if you have a significant difference in open rates and conversions based on the subject.

Test the word count of your marketing emails.

Recent studies suggest that emails between 50 and 125 words have the highest conversion rates.

So think outside of the box when you’re running these A/B tests.

Don’t assume that you’re only allowed to test elements of your website. Email campaigns are another viable option.

Revisit your early tests

A/B tests don’t just last for a day or two.

Typically, you’ll want to run each test for at least a few weeks or so to make sure that you’ve got a large enough sample size to yield conclusive results.

So let’s say you run 4 or 5 different tests on your CTA button. That alone could take 3 months. Then you move on to test your headlines, images, colors, and checkout process.

By the time you get through all of these tests, a year or two could have passed since your initial test.

Well, don’t stop now. Go back and see if your CTA is still as efficient as possible.

Conclusion

A/B testing is one of the best ways to increase your conversion rates.

But you don’t just run one test and call it a day. This process needs to be a continuous part of your marketing strategy. Always strive to make improvements to your website.

Test things like your CTA buttons, headlines, and checkout process.

You can also test visual elements such as your images and color schemes on your pages.

A/B testing isn’t just restricted to your website. You can apply this strategy to your email marketing campaigns as well.

Once you finish testing something, move on to the next element. After you’ve tested everything, start back at the beginning.

What elements of your website are you testing first to improve your conversion rates?

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