With regard to our assumptions and tests, then we’ll be sure to publish some of those findings and research on the blog at some point in the future. Right now our idea is to and define some core concepts and then get into more specific research and cases later on.

This way we can link specific findings to general concepts, which (hopefully) makes for a more complete understanding of our research.

Cheers.

I like the About page: it’s direct and clear. I also like the fact you have a manifesto.

It’d be interesting to read about some of the assumptions you’ve had overturned — the more research we have, the better.

I’m guessing you’re British, Jamie. Are you also based in Copenhagen?

“So why isn’t there a Baymard Institute About page?”
This was something we actually discussed in the very beginning and we decided it would be interesting to see how people would react to a site without an about page. Our assumption was (as your’s) that this wouldn’t drive conversion.

We’ve now been running without an about page for about 3 months and based on the feedback we’ve received and by looking through our website statistics this assumption seems to have proven true.

So as a consequence of the results of this experiment (and your post) we’ve just launched an about page: http://baymard.com/blog/about-us

This approach very much reflects our belief in testing things even if you think you know the answer. In this case our assumption proved true. Other times we’ve been left flabbergasted by how wrong our assumptions were. You never really know.

With regard to your more general point in this post, I wholeheartedly agree, and think you hit it home with “If designers don’t consider what users want from a site they’ll lose conversions.”