Interest in multivariate testing (MVT) is now growing at an accelerating rate, with many organisations announcing firm intentions in this area. While three years ago, MVT was new to the UK market and a minority practice, it is now a critical part of website development strategies across many sectors. Organisations now recognise the importance of securing the best possible ROI by making sure that they get the most from those visitors before they click away again.
MVT takes the guesswork out of web design optimisation, testing the measurable reactions of customers to subtly tweaked page layouts, content mix and navigation paths. Unlike other forms of such testing, the MVT approach is able to deduce the best combinations from its detailed, integrated analysis. Because it uses science rather than gut-feel, MVT overrides the random preferences of senior managers to deliver tangible results.
While there is now a plethora of MVT tools on the market, each with their own relative strengths, randomly applying the technology to your company’s web pages is not going to elicit the desired results. Identifying low-hanging fruit may be fairly straightforward, but the impact of any initial changes will soon be lost if there is not an ongoing commitment to iterative website development.
Website enhancement Implementing MVT and perpetual, iterative website enhancement with a clear strategy – and under the close guidance of experts who know what they’re looking for – is key. While an initial overhaul based on the most dramatic changes can make a big difference, this impact will quickly fade unless the findings from one phase of testing are fed into the next phase, and so on. Amazon remains a strong example, since the company is continually refining its web pages by issuing slightly adapted layouts to large groups of users, without anyone being any the wiser. This is live testing on a mammoth scale, and enables powerful comparisons that could not be achieved in a lab. But this is not something that is done haphazardly it is a full-time job, requiring dedicated experts.
While MVT is now broadly acknowledged to be a critical, central requirement in any serious online enterprise, it must be accepted too that this remains a young market, where specialist skills and experience are essential to drive maximum results.
MVT is not something that can be done once, or even once a year, and then left alone for a while as the higher revenues come in. It is a discipline and a service that must be built into companies’ ongoing marketing programmes.
10 top tips for implementing MVT
1. Keep it fresh: Static websites don’t perform as well as dynamic sites, so keep updating content and presentation in order to entice customers to spend more or convert quicker.
2. Test as you go: Live testing and iterative site development is the key to high conversion rates. Even subtle changes such as font size, colour and language can have a huge impact on revenues so keep testing different variations to see what yields the best results.
3. Customise your website: Make sure that your website has a welcoming look and feel and clearly displays the offers that are most likely to appeal to customers.
4. Get promotional messaging right: Make sure that product offers, discounts and promotions have a clear, concise call -to-action. Live testing will help you determine which promotions drive the most sales uplift.
5. Up-sell and cross-sell: Make the right recommendations to customers at the right stage of the buying process in order to maximise revenues. Utilise ‘people who looked at this destination also considered here’ suggestions, favourites and wish-lists.
6. Make it easy to buy: If the registration, log-in and check-out processes on your website are too cumbersome then visitors will simply give up and go and buy from one of your competitors instead, so thoroughly test and improve your forms.
7. Personalise: A one-size-fits-all website won’t deliver a best performing visitor experience, so use information you pick up about visitors to show targeted pages in session for your different audiences.
8. Make navigation easy: If customers are bounced around a website in such a way that leaves them dizzy and confused then they will leave with their basket empty. Make sure that you get the navigation basics right for example, include a search facility, make the check-out page prominent, and make it easy for customers to jump between pages without wiping clean forms every time.
9. Remember your customers: For many customers ordering online is a multi-stage approach, involving research across many sites and a number of separate sessions online. To ensure customers come back to your site, tailor the content you serve to a returning customer so that the last pages they looked at appear as soon as they hit the site.
10. Keep them coming back for more: Incentivise customers to keep returning for more with direct-to-customer offers and relevant products based on their buying history.
