Why I'm Using Pixels Instead of Surveys

Spent this week getting the pixel tracking sorted before the site goes live, and it's made me think a bit more carefully about how I'm actually testing this thing.

Originally I'd assumed I'd do a usability study get people in, give them tasks, ask them questions after. But that's not really the plan anymore. Instead I'm tracking how people naturally move through the site: where they land, where they leave, how long they sit on each page, what path they take. No tasks, no researcher watching over their shoulder.

The reason is that what I'm actually claiming with The Raw Theory is behavioural. The whole idea is that if you strip out the clutter and make things clearer, people hesitate less. That's something you can literally see in the data if it's working, people should move through the site without getting stuck or bailing out halfway.

The trade-off is real though. Tracking tells me how people use it, but not why. If someone spends ages on a page I won't know if that's because they were interested or because they were confused. Which is a limitation I'll have to be upfront about in the paper.

Also renamed a section of the paper this week because of this what I'd been calling the "usability study" isn't one. It's prototype validation. Different method, different name.

Next up: getting it live so the data can actually start coming in.