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How to Optimize Your Site with Multivariate Testing

  • Contributor
  • Mar 23, 2012
  • 3 minute read

The key to resonating with your online audience is simple: give them what they want. And if you aren’t sure what they want, then figure it out. After all, this is what you would do for your real-life customers, right? It’s a mere matter of extending that foresight with your online clients. For example, if you have a pregnant woman shopping in your store, then you’d want your employees to take her to the section where baby clothes and supplies are being sold. Similarly, if you see a young girl walk in, then your salespeople would approach her and point her off in the direction where clothes for teenagers are being sold.

Source: widefunnel
So how do you do that with your online customers? You can’t see them and not every user would be willing to create a profile on your site to get an enhanced shopping experience while providing you with the information that you’re looking for. What you should do at this point is make use of techniques and methods that are based on behavioral targeting, which includes multivariate testing.

Behavioral Targeting and Personalization

Behavioral targeting is defined as a set of methods and techniques that help webmasters and online publishers make their campaigns more effective. This is done by gathering data from actual site users so that targeted content and ads can be served to them when they visit the site again. User groups will also be created, and each will be programmed with specific settings and preferences that have been matched with the interests of its members.

What is Multivariate Testing?

Under the umbrella of behavioral targeting is multivariate testing. In these tests, several elements of a website are tried out at a time in a live setting. This means that the actual users of these sites are the ones who are subjected to the tests. How they respond to these changes will then be recorded and used to gauge the overall success and failure of the online campaigns that have been implemented.

Various elements on a page can be tested, from formatting and color themes to form layouts and copy text. Even the content within these elements can be modified as well. For example, when considering different banners, you can choose between images banners or banners that have both text and images on them.

Source: beehivestrategy

Multivariate Test Designs

Multivariate testing has been around for quite a while, so numerous test designs have been developed for it throughout the years. Two of the most common techniques are covered below:

Discrete Choice. This model focuses on how users justify buying items or making tradeoffs when faced with a purchase decision. Variations on website elements are thus used to determine how the changes might affect a user’s purchase decision. For example, will listing down a summary of the features of the product encourage customers to purchase? Will featuring promotions and discounts more prominently in the header push customers to add more to their cart to take advantage of what is being advertised? Chances are, both changes will increase sales, but you can verify these hypotheses concretely by conducting the multivariate tests.

Tagutchi method. This method involves testing multiple elements over multiple locations on the website. It has been deemed as more useful for sites that have low to medium traffic. With the Tagutchi method, a large number of different variations should be tested so that responses can be obtained from a large enough sample of users, thus ensuring reliable data. This technique is also sometimes used in designing the experiments themselves so that the number of possible variations can be reduced while still providing results that are statistically valid.

Other users have chosen to utilize a combination of various test designs to create their multivariate tests. The important thing to remember at this point is to go with a design that will fit the needs and purposes of your site best.

About the Author:Tech writer EJ Parfitt has been writing for a while now and is a respected writer with many tech and sports sites.  During his free time , you’re sure to see him competing in local chess tournaments in downtown Fort Lauderdale FL .

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1 comment
  1. Eden says:
    Apr 8, 2012 at 2:46 am

    Hello, you contact our agence if you need a website

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