It may help to start with some analytics work to find the important pages to test and do some informal user testing to come up with some initial hypotheses.

Of course, if you don’t test all the ideas, you’ll never know which ones are best. Hippos can sometimes have good ideas too.

Chris

I don’t know that I’d refer to each test as a Mini Project in so many words, but different tests can easily have varying degrees of complexity and impact. Instead of stand alone Mini Projects, site optimization should become a standard part of your every day business, where you focus on site conversion just as much as you do on your external marketing campaigns. It can be tough to get that level of commitment from the HIPPOs sometimes.

Depending upon how advanced your company is in terms of testing, the decision of what to test getting “HIPPO’ed” might not be the worst thing ever. At least you are testing! Ideally though, you can become agile enough so that testing is occurring without intervention from the HIPPOs.

Good point, most times hypothesis get discussed as theories where the audience( decision makers) debate about what to test first and what later. What are your thoughts on prioritizing a list of hypothesis statements.

Do you present them as Mini Projects with a budget estimate, complexity and impact or take some other approach.

Most times if testing projects are left to decision makers to discuss they end up being HIPPO’ed. What should be the format so the audience says Oh YES!/ NOPE.

Aman