I didn't rewatch the entire presentation but McKinley does discuss the user makeup in the experimental groups...yes they do account for different kinds of users, and the most drastic difference between user behavior are between sellers and non-sellers. Someone from Etsy would have to talk about how much slicing-and-dicing of the demographic that they do...but even if infinite scroll was good for some users (new users without pagination-related habits) and not for others, it's probably not a good idea to have two kinds of search experience in the hopes that the "oldies" eventually figure it out...based solely on how hard it is to implement infinite-scroll in the technical sense.
It's pretty common for us to look at new vs. returning users and Etsy sellers vs. others (sellers are obviously really engaged users, and behave differently). Occasionally one group will stand out, but not in this case.
http://image.slidesharecdn.com/continuous-experimentation-12...
I didn't rewatch the entire presentation but McKinley does discuss the user makeup in the experimental groups...yes they do account for different kinds of users, and the most drastic difference between user behavior are between sellers and non-sellers. Someone from Etsy would have to talk about how much slicing-and-dicing of the demographic that they do...but even if infinite scroll was good for some users (new users without pagination-related habits) and not for others, it's probably not a good idea to have two kinds of search experience in the hopes that the "oldies" eventually figure it out...based solely on how hard it is to implement infinite-scroll in the technical sense.