Internet Marketing Guides

You may already use Google Website Optimizer or some other multivariate testing tool to optimize your web site pages that either sell something or have signup forms for your email list…

If not, you probably have the following questions:
What is Multivariate testing?

What is A/B or Split testing?

Why test at all? Testing is the only way to know what parts of your site are working to convert visitors to customers and what is not working, you can’t guess, you have to track it and test it.

A/B Split testing tests one version of a page against another. If you have a sales page, a squeeze page, or a signup page on your web site, A/B Split testing would take two versions of the page and a split testing tool such as Google Web Site Optimizer, and display one version of the page to half the visitors and the other version of the page to the other half of the visitors. The split testing tool tracks and totals which version of the page is more successful at making sales, or getting signups, or whatever the purpose of the page, like my signup page at Internet Business. You can then either just use the winning page, or take the winner and test it against another version.

Multivariate Testing. Google Web Site Optimizer also supports Multivariate testing (as do other tools) Multivariate testing allows you to test different versions of various parts of your page at the same time. For example you can test several headlines, different versions of a product photo, different font sizes or colors, and different copy. This allows you to maximize results much faster than performing a sequence of A/B split tests.

Multivariate Testing is also important because certain combinations of page components may perform better together. For example a certain headline may perform well, and a certain photo may perform well, but when used together they may perform many times better. Finding that combination with split testing may take so long that it’s practically impossible. Multivariate testing allows that combination to bubble up much faster.

Are there any dangers of multivariate testing? One that comes to mind is trying too many variations. I tend to put too many variates in my multivariate testing! Why is this a problem? Do the math! If we have 6 versions of a headline, 2 versions of a logo, 2 versions of body copy, and 6 background colors and 2 border styles to test, that equals 288 combinations! It takes a lot of traffic to thoroughly test 288 combinations.

What should we do? Test the major page components first. I find it much better to get a winning combination of headline, copy, and photo or video (if you have a product photo or video). Once you have gotten a few combinations that do well, take the the losing combinations out of the test and add in some of the more mundane tests such as background color. Multivariate software does not have to be part or large managed software systems like BMC Managed Services

Some people may say that font color and background color can make a big difference in conversion so I should not call them mundane. Yes, they can make a big difference, that’s why we need to test them, but unless you have a lot of traffic to your site, I think it’s better to “stage” your testing… you’re much better off to test the major things like headlines first.

Fred Black
www.pqInternet.com

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