IBM Web Team Measures Impact of an Editor on Content
James Mathewson, Frank Donatone, and Cynthia Fishel of IBM conducted an experiment to measure the impact of an editor on web content:
We took a sample of unedited pages with high traffic from across our various business units and ran them through Dave Harlan, the editing lead for the group that creates a lot of our marketing content. We then ran an A/B test, where we served the unedited versions to a random sample of users and the edited versions to the rest of the users. We then measured engagement (defined as clicks to desired links on the page) on those pages over the course of a month.
The results were astonishing. The mean difference in engagement was 30 percent across the set of pages. And the standard deviation was one percent–we got a 30 percent improvement on the desired call to action for the pages across the board. Now it was just one test and it needs to be replicated before we draw strong conclusions. Your mileage may vary depending on the quality of your editors (Dave is exceptional, by all accounts). But we can provisionally conclude that well edited pages do 30 percent better than unedited pages.
Julio Vazquez says:
Jul 16th, 2010
No surprise here. Any content that’s well-edited will create better results (no matter what you’re measuring) than content that goes through little editing. Most writers feel (and they are right to an extent) that they write clearly and concisely. The reality is that a dispassionate set of eyes will always find places to improve content and that will increase engagement for all.
usagi says:
Aug 2nd, 2010
Um, duh? There’s a reason editor has been a profession for a very long time. To say nothing of copy-editor (actually, that might be an interesting follow-up: content editing vs. copy editing).
carlo says:
Aug 2nd, 2010
Any form of communication must be properly edited and designed (and viceversa), because consistency is the only way.
Alejandro Martín says:
Aug 3rd, 2010
Being an editor myself I feel de conclusion is the opposite. Only 30%!
You have to do a lot of job, and you have to be paid, and Only the 30% more.
Also, there are different ways of editing, and the question is not only between editing and not editing. When you have good collaborators you can almost not edit, but you chose them, and you can tell them when they are not doing their work ok. And you have some corner of the screen for you, just to make more visible what you consider to be more important. And many other ways of editing by not editing the “paper” way.