Magento, the widely used open source ecommerce platform, just announced it will soon have an interface to integrate with Google Website Optimizer. Magento users will be able to enter the pertinent script right into a section in the Magento Admin Panel.
This of course allows Magento users to do A/B and multivariate testing on their sites, with very little effort, and no heavy development effort. Magento, an inexpensive ecom platform, is now integrated with a free optimization (and analytics) platform, enabling webmasters to make data-driven decisions and optimize the visitor experience by answering questions like “would it be better if we actually displayed the prices of these items?”
To save or make through optimization, there were some best practices that they needed to put in place, and I had some hunches about some aspects of the layout that I thought would improve their conversion rate. Primarily this had to do with the add-to-cart button and the options (usually size and color) selection. I knew we could run some simple split tests on the layout and options, and find the one that resulted in the best conversion rate. I was fairly certain I could raise the add-to-cart rate by 5%.
There were of course development and consulting costs involved in this. But an overall 14% boost in sales more than covered those costs, not to mention the long-term value of acquiring new customers by improving the visitor experience.
So, where do you start with split or multivariate testing? Anywhere! Start small, make one educated and solid assumption, and test it out. Watch the results, and then move on to another change, or, if you were unsuccessful, modify your first assumption and try again. The critical objective is to begin to make testing part of your decision making process. Next time you are sitting with your developer, marketing personnel, or site manager, deciding what you think “looks”, “would work”, or “worked at company x” better, just remember that your visitors will do a much better job of letting you know what works.
