Twelve Parsecs to Optimization: Han Solo and the Magic of Marketing

“You’ve never heard of the Millennium Falcon? … It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs,” says Han Solo in Star Wars: A New Hope. For those unsure of their galactic smuggling routes, that’s really fast. Impossibly fast. But Han Solo does it with the Millennium Falcon. Marketers and CROs deal with Millennium Falcon type speeds daily. Website optimization is a fast-paced, highly fickle endeavor. You need to get campaigns out the door quickly, change them in a moment if they don’t work, and respond to your competitor’s moves at the drop of a hat. If you don’t, you may lose your opportunity before you even get a chance to try, and that’s certainly not optimal. One of the keys to good optimization — just like being a great smuggler/hero — is the ability to move quickly.

Get Your Work Out the Door

There are a lot of theories about how, or whether, Han Solo really could make the Kessel Run in fewer than twelve parsecs. But, no matter how you approach it, the Millennium Falcon is fast. So fast, in fact, that it actually doesn’t really matter that a parsec is a unit of distance rather than time, or that the distance of the Kessel Run is a lot farther than whatever time Solo accounts for, or that he probably took a shortcut because he’s actually just an incredibly dexterous and skilled pilot, begging the question, is it even the Kessel Run at all, or is it a whole new course?

The point is, Solo does what he needs to do, and he does it fast. Add to carts lagging on your product detail pages? Design a variation and A/B test it on the spot. Seeing lots of abandoned form submissions? Change the form and try it out. When you get your data, implement the new plan.

Be Quick to be Competitive

Optimization, of course, isn’t just about speed. It’s also about navigating the market to make sure you stay competitive. Han Solo wasn’t the only one doing the Kessel Run, just like you’re not the only marketer or CRO optimizing your website. You just can’t afford to spend a week designing a promotion once your competitor has one out the door — you need to be able to design and implement on the spot.

Han Solo could do this in part because of his own talents and in part because of the Millennium Falcon. Make sure that you have the Millennium Falcon of A/B testing solutions — one that you can use quickly, flexibly, and have total control over.

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