This is a guest post by Blake Sanders from Maxymiser.com.
The human brain is a phenomenal thing. It solves problems in ways incomprehensible to most people, and it responds to some information better than others.
Understanding this nature is helpful when website, business, and blog owners look to convert more of their visitors into “customers”. One tool that helps us understand this is multivariate testing.
Unlike A/B or “split” testing, multivariate testing (“MVT”) tests many aspects of a system at a time to learn of the relative impact of that change. The impact of these tests oftentimes leads to higher conversions in the form of newsletter signups, sales, feed subscriptions, and other pivotal elements that increase conversions.
In this article we’ll touch briefly on the impact of multivariate testing.
Who Is Multivariate Testing For?
Multivariate testing can be used by individuals and businesses big and small who want to see how small improvements or adjustments can impact their conversions.
Generally, MVT is best suited towards those who are already generating decent traffic, as this will determine the optimum combination of website elements in the shortest time, giving you significant results to your website’s performance. If you’re not sure the optimum amount of traffic required, multivariate testing calculators are available online and free to use.
Reasons To Test
- When you’re fine-tuning: If you want to fine-tune for maximum effectiveness after conducting a/b testing, multivariate testing can work for you.
- You want to determine variables that influence each other: If you want to test more than 10 variables at a time, multivariate testing will produce faster results while producing less testing bias.
- You’re only able to test specific variables: If you have design restrictions, multivariate testing can be a more efficient strategy than the A/B or “split” testing method.
What Should I Test?
You should first figure the key elements that turn visitors into conversions. Each website’s goals vary, so this varies from business to business.
Are you trying to increase newsletter signups?
Perhaps you want to grow sales?
Say for example you want to test a headline, call to action, and image and the variations of each. Your variations will look like this:
- Headline: headline 1 and headline 2
- Call to action: call to action 1 and call to action 2
- Image: image 1 and image 2
The multivariate tests aims to see which combination of these versions achieves the highest conversion rate. Traffic is split between the following to see which combination produces the highest conversion rates.
8 Testing Variation Combinations -:
- Headline 1 + Call to Action 1 + Image 1
- Headline 1 + Call to Action 1 + Image 2
- Headline 1 + Call to Action 2 + Image 1
- Headline 1 + Call to Action 2 + Image 2
- Headline 2 + Call to Action 1 + Image 1
- Headline 2 + Call to Action 1 + Image 2
- Headline 2 + Call to Action 2 + Image 1
- Headline 2 + Call to Action 2 + Image 2
Multivariate Testing Tools
To create your multivariate test, first choose a framework that supports it. Afterwards, choose which sections to include in it.
Google Website Optimizer is a free basic multivariate testing tool by Google. It’s the easiest way to see how making changes to page elements has on conversion rates.
Conducting Test: Some Tips
Remembering these simple details can go a long way towards making your test a successful one.
- Reviewing your data is of the utmost importance. Keep track of reports via spreadsheet and pinpoint the elements that are causing the biggest swing in conversion.
- Keep up with your competitors. They very well may be testing elements of their own.
- Be patient. Results come over time. Testing pages that get a lot of traffic and determining the proper length for running a test will give data for measurements.
Conclusion
Multivariate testing is crucial in the evolution of your website to attract new leads. This easy to use tool has the ability to affect businesses revenue and profits. Use multivariate testing on your next online marketing effort to gain insights into customer preferences and user behavior.
Its completely new to me . Is there any call to action combinations ? with certain syntax as well as color of the h1 tags which have more conversations ..
Interesting alternative to A/B testing. I recently wrote an article highlighting different ways to turn visitors into customers by increasing conversion rate, but this is also an interesting way to do so! We’re all continually learning through each other, so thanks for adding to the conversation!
I have never tested to that extent before… I have seen the difference in conversion and to the bottom line which simple variations make, so almost continuous testing makes sense to me. Guess I will need to spend some time with Google website optimizer.
I wish we could use this multi-variate testing on adsense ads. It will help us determine the best performing ad unit faster.
I have recently participated in a MVT done by a certain website; they were asking for the best look of their homepage. Recalling it made me establish the connection between your article to real life.
I agree that MVT is a very effective tool based from your explanations.
On another note, the idea of combinations struck my fancy. Indeed, it turned out the be related to the combinations in Statistics (in fact, that’s the most interesting topic for me aside from probability).
Testing is the best way to learn what works and what doesn’t no matter how sure someone could be about his/her sales copy or landing page if he/she doesn’t test it and compare it with variations of the same copy he/she will never know if it’s the best possible and converts better than something else…
Hi Blake,
I have heard this term before Multivariate Testing “MVT” but didn’t know what exactly it is and how it works. You really explained it wonderfully and once you start getting some leads as per your requirements only then it can work for your business.
I know how important A/B testing is to improve your goals, but didn’t know there is a wy to do it more effective with multivariate testing. I will digg into this to get more detailed. Thanks for the free Google Website Optimizer tool tip. Looks like a good point to start.
I’ve heard a lot of people say that multivariate testing could get one’s landing page conversion by up to 300%. This is by doing it in one test alone. This is incredible.
This is a really nice explanation. Testing is really important and is key in creating a website that really works for you. As you mentioned patience is really important during this testing period. It takes time to figure out what works and what doesn’t and to really give the test enough time to show some true results.