Where test ideas come from

Ideas is your list of things to test. Each idea is a short hypothesis, linked to the research behind it.

Three ways ideas arrive

Research rules (shown as "Varly"). When you click Find new ideas, Varly checks your research against fixed rules. On your six busiest pages it looks for:

• Click impact: an element whose clickers convert at least 1.3 times as often as other visitors (with at least a 95% chance that this is real), but that fewer than half of the visitors use.
• Rage clicks: visitors clicking the same element over and over, in at least 2% of pageviews.
• Dead clicks: clicks on something that does nothing, in at least 3% of pageviews.

Across the whole site it also looks for:

• Slow pages: the main content takes longer than 2.5 seconds to appear (only on pages with at least 100 pageviews).
• JavaScript errors: errors that affect at least 10 sessions.
• Survey answers: one answer chosen by at least a quarter of respondents, once a question has at least 20 answers.

The rules work without an AI key. Each finding gets only one idea, even if you rejected that idea earlier. Varly also runs the rules once a day for every site with tracking on.

Varly AI. If your organization has an AI key, Find new ideas also sends this site's research to the AI. The AI never sees data from your other clients. It combines the signals and writes up to six more ideas, each citing the research it used. If an idea is general best practice and not based on your own data, its research says Best practice, not yet backed by data from this site. If Daily research round is ticked in the AI key card of Organization settings, the AI also runs once a day by itself. Above the board, Last research round: shows when it last ran.

Your own ideas. Click New idea, fill in the form and click Add idea. Or, on any page of a site, click the round button with the three orange dots at the bottom right and type or say what you see: the idea assistant turns your note into an idea, written up by AI if your organization has an AI key. AI assistants connected through a chat (for example Claude) can add ideas too.

Who created an idea

Each card shows who created it:

• Varly for ideas from the research rules
• Varly AI for ideas from an AI research round
• a team member's name and photo for ideas typed in by hand, followed by "via idea assistant" when they used the idea assistant
• the assistant's name followed by "(chat)", for example "Claude (chat)", for ideas added from a chat

What an idea contains

Open an idea to see and edit these fields:

• Title
• If we see…: what the research shows, with facts and numbers.
• …then we change…: the change you want to test.
• …because we expect…: what should happen, and why.
• Page: where the test runs. Similar pages count as one, so Product pages (/products/…) means all your product pages. Choose Whole site to run the test everywhere, or Another page (type a path)… to type a page Varly hasn't seen visits on yet, such as /cart.
• Impact: from 1 (small) to 5 (big). Your first estimate of how much this could move conversion.
• Ease: from 1 (a lot of work) to 5 (quick). Your first estimate of how easy it is to build and test.

Impact sets the effect Varly plans the test for under Can we test this?. The ranking itself comes from the Priority card on the right: the questions of your scoring framework. When a framework question is filled in from the impact or ease estimate (for example Ease of implementation in PXL), the line under Impact and Ease says so; answering that question yourself in Priority overrides it.

At the top right you set the Owner (who works on this idea) and Labels, such as the page type or the lever. Both save straight away. Labels belong to your whole organization: create one by typing its name under + Add label, or pick one of the Suggested labels. See All tests and the test overview.

Click Save idea to keep your changes. Next to the form you see the Priority score and Research behind this idea (with links to the heatmap, click impact report or survey it came from); Can we test this? sits below the form. On the board, each card shows how many research findings it has, for example "2 research findings". Prioritization explains the score.

Statuses

The board has four columns, and the best-scoring ideas sit at the top of each:

• New: just arrived. Click Add to shortlist to keep it, or Reject to drop it.
• Shortlist: worth testing. Click Move to In test when you start a test for it.
• In test: a test has been created for this idea. The card shows the test and its status, for example Running and the day count; click it to open the test.
• Done: you have finished with it. Ending a test moves its idea here by itself.

Rejected ideas are collapsed below the board, under "rejected ideas". To move an idea to any status, open it and use the buttons next to Move to:.

Archive or delete an idea

Open the idea and use the buttons at the top right. Varly asks you to confirm first.

• Archive takes the idea off the board and out of prioritization, and Varly won't suggest it again. Its research and score are kept. To find it again, click Archived above the board, open the idea and click Restore from archive.
• Delete removes the idea for good. You only see it for an idea you or your team added that has no test. Ideas that Varly found in your research can only be archived, because otherwise the next research round would suggest them again. Ideas with a test stay with that test.

From idea to test

Open the idea and look at Can we test this?. It shows whether the page gets enough visitors for a test, and lists any tests already made from this idea. With an AI key, pick a test type and click Create test. To make the changes yourself (also without an AI key), click Create test and edit it myself and use the visual editor. Either way the idea moves to In test by itself, and the test gets the idea's owner and labels. When you end the test, the idea moves to Done by itself. See Create an A/B test.

Common problems

• "No new ideas: everything found already has an idea." Varly found nothing new since the last round. Give it more days of data, or run a survey to collect new research.
• No ideas at all. The rules only fire on clear findings, so a quiet site may produce none at first. Check that data comes in, or add your own ideas.
• You don't see any buttons. You have the Viewer role, which is read-only. Ask an Owner to change your role.
• An AI error appears after Find new ideas. The ideas from the rules are still saved. Check your AI key.