Increase Performance With Multivariate Testing
We have sophisticated tracking and optimization systems for online campaigns. Yet do we look beyond what happens at the advertising level?
We have sophisticated tracking and optimization systems for online campaigns. Yet do we look beyond what happens at the advertising level?
Online advertising is booming. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) reports online advertising costs at $9.6 billion for 2004, a 33 percent increase over last year. But skyrocketing customer acquisition costs aren’t matched by increased conversion. Forrester Research says conversion rates have dropped 32 percent over the past two years; over 97 percent of retail Web site visitor leave without becoming buyers.
Many of us have developed sophisticated tracking and optimization systems for online campaigns. But do we look beyond what happens at the advertising level? Do we look at what happens once the audience arrives on our Web site? If we do look, what do we do to ensure the conversion process is followed to completion?
There’s some really interesting work being done to increase conversion rates with multivariate testing. Multivariate testing allows you to analyze multiple variables at once and to isolate each variable’s individual effect.
This type of testing isn’t new. Direct marketing experts have used it for a long time. Now, more traditional and interactive agencies see value in this type of measurement and analysis.
Offermatica is making multivariate testing easy and offering it to the masses. This hosted testing and optimization service assists businesses with optimizing their online effectiveness. By creating zones on Web pages in which content can change, multiple page combinations are possible. Offermatica’s software interface also allows you to glean best-performing combinations from which you can adapt your site. Bottom line, the company enables marketers to rapidly test product and offer content to maximize selling effectiveness.
Let’s say you’ve got a campaign landing page on which you’d like to test multiple featured products and offers to see which combinations perform best. Multivariate testing is a great way to figure this out. With Offermatica, you can optimize not just the landing page but the whole user session as well. You can dramatically increase campaign performance in such areas as conversion rate, revenue per visitor, and gross margin.
Interested in implementing multivariate testing in your campaigns? Consider the following thoughts from Offermatica:
You can also apply multivariate testing to search text listings and display advertising to optimize creative. You can test colors, headlines, offers, images, and so on.
I spoke with James Rouche, founder and president of Offermatica, about multivariate testing. He offered these thoughts:
I wholeheartedly agree. Yet it is a complex topic. Research it for yourself, and let’s get a dialogue going.