Pete Koomen: The Quest for More Clicks

In January 2010, Pete Koomen started Optimizely to help companies maximize their websites’ sales and click-through rates. A week later, an earthquake hit Haiti. Koomen and his co-founder Dan Siroker, a colleague from his former job at Google, received a call from the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, which needed technical assistance with its online pledge drive. The pair worked nearly nonstop for three days on software the nonprofit could use to determine the most effective look for the site’s donation page. The tweaks increased pledges by about 10 percent, which translated into an extra $1 million for the campaign in about a month, according to Koomen.

Since then he has set out to apply his data-driven method to just about anything on the Web. As president of the San Francisco-based company, Koomen, 30, runs its product, engineering, and design groups. Using the service, online publishers can change links, text, and images on their Web pages with a few clicks. Some visitors then see an edited page, while the rest are taken to the original. The service then tracks clicks to measure which version is most effective. The smallest changes can significantly affect revenue, Koomen says. In the case of the Haiti fundraiser, placing a photograph of the devastation next to the “donate” button induced more people to give.