'Net Features : multivariate testing

Designing Websites for Multivariate Testing, Key Considerations

Administrator — Thu, 09 May 2013 16:45:00 GMT

:: By Kim Ann King, Chief Marketing Officer, SiteSpect ::

If you are like most digital marketers, you are doing everything you can to optimize your website. One of the best ways to optimize your site is through multivariate testing, which is a technique that enables your visitors to tell you what’s working on your site and what isn’t. In a multivariate test, variations of your site’s content are presented to visitors. As visitors navigate through the site, their behavior is tracked to determine how each content variation affects marketing goals such as conversion, registration, retention, average order value and so on.

While multivariate testing is an effective and proven technique for optimizing a site, some sites can be made easier to test than others. Technical factors such as the structure of the HTML come into play in determining how much preparation you will need to create a new multivariate test. But since testing is so valuable in terms of giving you insight into your visitors' preferences and behaviors, it’s well worth considering how to make your site more readily testable. Doing so will yield a competitive advantage that makes it possible to out-test,out-learn, and out-optimize competitors.

There are a few times in your website’s lifecycle that are ideal for considering how to make your site more testable. For example, building a brand-new site or redesigning your current one gives you the perfect opportunity to apply some best practices and make your site’s elements easier to test. Another good time to prepare your site for multivariate testing is when you are adding major new content or functionality, where those new elements can be carefully introduced on the site so as to maximize their effectiveness without hindering existing site goals.

An interesting observation in the business of website design is the age-old struggle to balance a great-looking website versus a great-working website. Ideally, you want both, but the primary requirement should be a highly functional site that achieves your online marketing goals,instead of just a pretty website.

Here are four key considerations in preparing your site for multivariate testing success, which represent the fundamentals of making content testable:

1) Think About Your Mobile Visitors First

Mobile Web traffic is on the rise, and it’s far easier to create a simple mobile site that works with all devices than to build a complex, rich desktop website that needs to be scaled down for mobile users. You can use mobile targeting to understand which devices are accessing your site and test which content variations work for them.

For example, VEGAS.com ran a mobile A/B test that was able to quantify how mobile-optimized content influenced user behavior. In its tests, VEGAS.com decided to focus on key content that users were already accessing via mobile, namely the Homepage, top-level category pages such as hotels and shows, and the hotel room search tool. It turns out that VEGAS.com's mobile content outperformed regular non-mobile content across a number of key metrics. Some of the notable improvements that they achieved were:

• 22 percent reduction in bounce rate

• 16 percent increase in page views

• 14 percent increase in hotel searches

• Double-digit lift in conversion rate

2) Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

CSS is a popular choice for Web design consistency and standardization, and that’s great news for multivariate testing. Among other things, CSS centralizes site-wide styles such as text and headline specifications (font, style, color, size), page layout, and positioning of elements. So, when you make a CSS change , you change it in one place and the style is updated everywhere on the site. This makes it much easier to test multiple variations of site elements since you don’t have to wrestle with changes in multiple places, which you would have to if you weren’t using cascading style sheets. CSS is a key element in Responsive Web Design.

For example, a recent test for a B2B site revealed that by increasing the size of body text by 0.2 “em,” the time-per-visit increased by 21 percent and pageviews-per-visit increased by 18 percent. This test was highly fruitful, and because only one line of CSS was changed, it was very easy to design and deploy.

3) Employ Text-Oriented Navigation

In the past, Web designers often relied on images or Flash for navigation text elements, particularly for sites that were built before 2004-2005, since browser technology was such that CSS couldn’t be relied on for precise positioning or stylization of text and labels. Unfortunately, using images or Flash for navigation has the side effect of making it difficult to test alternate text labels—for example, to test “My Preferences” vs. “My Profile” vs. “My Settings.”

Since browsers have become much better at supporting CSS, there’s little reason to rely on images or Flash for navigation. Text links are much easier to modify and control, and thus are much easier to test and optimize.

But why bother testing navigation? Because they’re the milestones by which visitors step through your site to accomplish their tasks and reach your marketing goals. The best product, price, or promotion is no good if the visitor can’t grasp which link to click on to find the information they need, or to get to the next step in your site’s conversion process.

4) Use Responsive Web Design

Websites built from a Responsive Web Design perspective utilize an adaptable, fluid layout, media queries and flexible image sizes. That means a site’s elements can be added, removed or rearranged without interrupting or breaking the presentation of the surrounding content. Besides being a good design principle that makes the site more accessible across varying screen sizes, Responsive Web Design also makes multivariate testing much easier because you can determine which layout is most effective.

For example, an online jewelry retailer wanted to determine how cross-sell items should be displayed relative to customer product reviews. Because the site had a responsive design, a multivariate test was easily constructed that optimized the arrangement of elements within the page, leading to a 16 percent increase in average order value. And remember that sometimes “less is more,” meaning that visitors may prefer less cluttered pages as they browse your site. Responsive Web Design makes it possible to remove elements on your pages in order to determine the optimal amount of information that should be shown.

Another factor to consider about layout is that different types of visitors scan content in different ways. For example, older visitors who grew up without computers may view a page’s sections in a different order than younger visitors who have been “wired” since birth. Similarly, behavioral differences exist based on gender, education level, and language spoken.

And remember, the optimal layout is dependent on device. Analyses of consumer behavior have shown that mobile users have different needs and expectations than desktop users — environment, task-at-hand, and physical device constraints all differ, often dramatically. By making it easy to adjust page layout through the use of Responsive Web Design, you’ll be able to test and optimize for the audience and device that is unique to your site.

Summary

Overall, you’ll want your website to be modular, flexible, and easily testable. These are the qualities that make a site usable for your visitors and will support thorough optimization toward reaching your marketing goals. Multivariate testing is an advanced technique that enables you to increase revenue, turn browsers into buyers, and enhance your key performance indicators, whether that’s conversion rate or average order value.

About the Author

Kim Ann King is an award-winning marketing executive and has been a B2B software marketer for more than two decades. She currently serves as the Chief Marketing Officer of Web and mobile optimization firm SiteSpect.

Master List of Testing Tools

Allison Howen — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:34:00 GMT

Regardless of how talented your digital design team may be, it is always important to leverage testing tools to guarantee that your website is running at peak performance.

Luckily, there is a plethora of testing tools available, which can help Web workers examine everything from site speed and capabilities to conversion funnels and customer emotions.

However, before committing to a testing platform, it will serve you well to research the available options, as a tool that works for one business, may not for another. To get started, check out this diverse list of testing tools:

Quick Testing Tools

FiveSecondTest – This testing tool’s name is pretty self-explanatory, because FiveSecondTest enables users to quickly build and launch tests and review results. For example, once a user uploads a screenshot or mock-up, they simply need to set up questions and then launch the test. Then, test takers have five seconds to view the mock-up and answer the questions. FiveSecondTest collects responses and extracts the most frequent keywords so that test administrators can easily review results.

UserTesting.com – This on-demand usability testing tool enables Web workers to create tests and then either select participants from the company’s user panel or run tests with the user’s live site visitors. Typically, users receive test feedback within an hour, which includes videos of participants taking the test and written answers from a personalized questionnaire. Additionally, test administrators can interact with test takers by asking follow-up questions after the test has been completed.

Pingdom – This quick and easy-to-use tool enables Web workers to test the speed of their websites. It identifies and rates aspects of a website that are fast, slow and too big. Users can then analyze this information to optimize site speed and performance.

Load Impact – Website owners can find out how much traffic their site can handle with the Load Impact tool. This testing tool is based in the cloud, and provides users with large scale load tests with up to 50,000 simulated users, the ability to emulate multiple user type scenarios and real-time testing. The platform also generates reports that include multiple charts and measurement metrics.

Usabilla – The Usabilla platform provides Web workers with live feedback so that websites can be optimized based on the feedback of real-time customers. Unlike other solutions, Usabilla actually measures customer emotions through an interactive tab. When site visitors click on this tab they can rate any part of a website by selecting one of five different emotions. Furthermore, site visitors can also add tags or comments to provide more details about their experience.

Traditional Website Testing Tools

Maxymiser – Maxymiser’s MaxTEST solution provides website owners with A/B and Multivariate testing tools, which can help optimize the customer experience. The feedback is derived from live online traffic, which provides users with metrics that can be leveraged to enhance the brand experience in order to increase conversion rates and the number of repeat customers.

Monetate – The TestLab solution from Monetate enables users to create advanced A/B and multivariate tests. Users simply need to fill in the solution’s sentence-based test builder by answering Who, What, When and Why. Furthermore, TestLab offers multi-page testing campaign functionality, which allows users to build tests around various page types or conversion funnels in order to analyze customer experiences that span multiple website pages.

Sitecore – This testing solution is the best of both worlds because it is robust, yet easy to use. The solution helps users create A/B and multivariate tests to analyze page components or entire site items. Moreover, users don’t need a team of programmers to create tests because Sitecore offers easy-to-use building tools, including check boxes, sliders and wizards.

SiteSpect – SiteSpect offers testing tools for both A/B testing and multivariate testing. The company’s wizard-driven interface enables users to build and run tests quickly, as well as evaluate metrics both during and after each campaign. Additionally, users can conduct serial testing to optimize site performance even further.

Vertster – This multivariate testing software enables users to test features, such as logos, copy, conversion funnels, forms, messages price points and customer service messages. The platform is built around a point-and-click WYSIWYG test editor, which enables users to quickly create and launch tests. Vertster offers five different versions of its platform, which can be used to help anyone from entrepreneurs to enterprises.

LiveBall – Web workers can leverage the LiveBall platform to create and conduct both A/B and multivariate tests. It is important to note that this platform enables users to build tests without codes or developers. Tests can be created to analyze website items such as content, forms, messaging and offers.

Google Analytics Content Experiments – Website owners can test elements of their site with this testing tool that is integrated into Google Analytics. With Content Experiments, users can set goals inside of their Google Analytics account and then tweak site elements, such as page design, layout and content, to meet those goals.

Multi-Channel Testing Tools

Autonomy – This company’s multivariate testing solution enables users to test specific site elements, full-page structures, email, keywords and online advertisements. The platform also integrates with most Web content management systems and offers users customizable dashboards and robust reports so that they can make data-based decisions for better performance across channels.

Webtrends – The Webtrends online testing platform helps users optimize key performance indicators, such as conversion rates, form completions, lead captures and time spent on site. The platform’s team of testing experts help businesses plan, deploy and analyze testing results within months so that Web workers can improve engagement across all channels.

Adobe – Web workers can use the Adobe Test&Target tool to execute A/B or multivariate tests across all channels. The tests can be set up to target specific audience segments so that marketers are able to measure content’s effectiveness and relevance. Furthermore, the platform's automated campaign management allows users to use self-optimizing campaigns to ensure that the most effective targeting scenarios are shown more often.

Have we left your favorite testing tool off this list? If so, please add it in the comment section below.

Master List of Multivariate Testing Tools

Allison Howen — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 14:00:00 GMT

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.

Although this inspirational motto can be applied to many aspects of life, merchants should definitely apply it when optimizing their e-commerce sites. However, keep in mind that “trying and trying again” is simply guesswork unless there is data backing up the testing – this is where multivariate tools come into play.

By using testing tools, merchants can analyze elements of an e-commerce site, such as page layout, call-to-action buttons, product pages and more. And unlike A/B testing, multivariate testing allows many different elements to be combined and tested at the same time – so that websites can be optimized to best fit consumer needs and increase conversions.

Therefore, it is time to find a method to your madness – check out these ten top multivariate testing tools:

Adobe Test&Target

Part of the Adobe Digital Marketing Suite and powered by Omniture, this tool allows merchants to continually make their online content and offers more relevant to their customers – which increases conversions. In fact, Reader's Digest had a 47-percent increase in conversions after conducting and evaluating testing using this solution. Furthermore, the Test&Target interface allows merchants to design and execute tests, create audience segments and target content.

Amadesa

This solution allows merchants to test several elements on a page and identify the winning combination within each element. Amadesa features “Pick the Winner” technology, which ensures that underperforming combinations are quickly eliminated. Amadesa also identifies the contribution that each element makes to the overall success of a particular combination, as well as helps determine which creative elements should be used across product or article pages.

Globalmaxer

The multivariate testing tool from GlobalMaxer allows merchants to test multiple variations of page elements in a live environment so that successful page combinations can be found. Testing helps merchants find combinations that provide greater uplift in conversions, better access to certain areas of a site, as well as better dwell time. Commonly tested elements include fonts, colors, logos, body copy, images and navigation. This solution also provides cultural multivariate testing, which isolates factors that have the biggest cultural impact on Web conversions.

Google Website Optimizer

With this free website testing and optimization tool, merchants can increase the value of existing Web traffic, which leads to the question – what doesn’t Google do? The Site Optimizer helps merchants test site content and design, while monitoring which combinations lead to the highest conversion rates. By taking advantage of this tool, merchants can increase ROI, visitor satisfaction and eliminate guesswork.

Maxymiser

Merchants can optimize customer experiences through A/B and multivariate testing from Maxymiser’s MaxTEST. Instead of "gut feelings" and guessing games, website optimization is based on data that is derived from online traffic feedback. With this customer feedback, merchants can increase their revenue and ROI through higher conversion rates, provide an enhanced site experience and decrease risks associated with design changes.

Monetate

Monetate automatically creates a control group for every campaign so that merchants can view the impact that a campaign has on key metrics such as conversion, average order value, cart abandonment and more. Merchants can gather data and run advanced tests through A/B and multivariate testing. Furthermore, the platform offers targeting options for making better connections with customers, which equals better conversion rates, more returning customers and higher average order values.

OfferMaxima

With OfferMaxima, merchants can test and optimize different website designs, email or direct marketing campaigns and printed ads. OfferMaxima’s technology can be used to target specific marketing offers, products and content to different segments of visitors. Benefits include reduced likelihood of false positives, validation results by audience and decisions that can be based on reliable samples.

Sitecore

Sitecore’s solution allows merchants to create A/B and multivariate tests from the in-line editing interface. Testing can include page components or entire site items. By optimizing everything from content on the homepage to call-to-action button appearance, merchants can increase conversion quantity and quality. Furthermore, Sitecore provides continuous feedback on site performance and customer engagement through Web-based reports.

SiteSpect

Test many changes simultaneously and evaluate the impact of combinations on conversion goals with multivariate testing from SiteSpect. This solution allows merchants to set up and test within minutes, as well as quickly determine the impact from each variation. Additionally, merchants can evaluate results during and after each test campaign.

Vertster

This solution provides merchants with fast results from Vertster’s multivariate testing algorithm. Merchants can stop guessing about site design because Vertster allows them to measure the effectiveness of thousands of page design possibilities simultaneously. Furthermore, the site testing is SEO safe and enables merchants to conduct anything from simple A/B testing to powerful Taguchi testing.

Webtrends

Webtrends Optimize combines testing and targeting platforms with optimization expertise. The solution’s recommended approach starts with general testing against all traffic, which is followed by testing optimal content against key segments (returning vs. new visitor, time of day, geo-targeting etc). After determining the optimals by segment, content can be used to target, which allows merchants to personalize content based on insights.

Increase Page-load Speeds with SiteSpect AMPS

Linc Wonham — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:00:00 GMT

SiteSpect has launched a Web and mobile performance optimization solution that leverages the power of multivariate testing and behavioral targeting.

In recent customer deployments, SiteSpect’s automated multivariate performance optimization solution (AMPS) has decreased page load times by as much as 50 to 70 percent. Faster websites not only improve the user experience but also increase conversion rates and average order values. Additionally, major search engine crawlers are now evaluating site speeds in their algorithms and ranking faster sites higher in search results.

Any type of site can be optimized with SiteSpect AMPS including e-commerce, publishing and social media, intranets, extranets and mobile-specific WAP sites. AMPS measures not only speed but also key performance indicators including bounce rate, conversion rate, average order value, abandonment and compound metrics that look at multiple behaviors both within and across visits.

Below are some of the key features to SiteSpect AMPS:

•    On-Page Optimization – reduces the size of CSS and JavaScript files, combines scripts, and reorders elements for optimal processing and rendering.
•    Cache Optimization – adjusts content cache settings to reduce network overhead, thereby decreasing page load time while simultaneously increasing Web server capacity.
•    Dynamic Parallelization – optimizes the browser’s ability to retrieve content by increasing parallelism, without requiring any change to the server or browser.
•    Network Optimization – SiteSpect's global private cloud utilizes real-time network measurements to determine fastest paths from any end-user location.
•    Cloud Delivery – SiteSpect's built-in cache positions content closer to the end user for reduced latency when delivering static content.
•    Modular Architecture – allows clients to test, measure the impact of, and deploy third-party performance solutions such as CDNs and open-source tools such as Steve Souders' ControlJS.

SiteSpect AMPS is available as either an on-premise enterprise appliance or a cloud-based ASP version, and both versions integrate seamlessly with SiteSpect's content testing and targeting solutions. Visit SiteSpect for more information.

Site Testing – The Gift That Keeps Giving

Linc Wonham — Sat, 27 Nov 2010 23:59:00 GMT

Not until Vegas.com enlisted SiteSpect to run some simple tests did the travel/destination website realize how much revenue it was losing because of its mobile strategy. Within a month and a half, Vegas.com had a new plan in place that has already dramatically increased conversion rates.

Implementation of the live A/B testing took only a matter of days, and Vegas.com had quantifiable results to evaluate after a little more than a month. Once it was able to determine the specific needs of Vegas.com’s growing mobile audience, SiteSpect offered a mobile website strategy that continues to produce optimal ROIs and higher revenues.

SiteSpect provides these and other services for companies such as NewEgg, Mozilla, Overstock.com, ShopNBC and many others. Through its non-intrusive A/B and multivariate website testing, SiteSpect provides its clients with the tools required to evaluate the statistical data needed to get the best results.

Today’s website testing methods and processes are faster, easier and more cost-effective than they’ve ever been, a fact that too many business owners have failed to realize. In addition to SiteSpect, there are numerous capable vendors who can put your site on the right track for 2011.

Two new companies in the website testing space are Optimizely and Visual Website Optimizer. Both have launched in the past year and offer A/B testing for prices ranging from $20 per month to $400 per month – and both also offer free trials. SiteSpect has website optimization and targeting capabilities, in addition to its wide-ranging testing solutions, and pricing is established on a case-by-case basis with the help of a company representative.

10 Terrific Testing Tips

Administrator — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 20:45:00 GMT

Are you basing copy and design changes on your gut feeling? STOP! There is a better way to optimize your website.

:: By Lars Johansson ::

By using a tool for A/B and multivariate testing, you can see what your visitors prefer and let the numbers speak. This allows you to find out what website tweaks make your visitors take action and increase sales. Don’t have a tool for testing? There are numerous tools from which to choose but I recommend that you first try Google Website Optimizer. It is free (get it here: http://goo.gl/hnid), and with it, you can find out what features you really need and which are just nice to have.

When you get started with testing, you need to keep some important guidelines in mind.

Remember that “best practice” is somebody else’s practice

You can look at what others have been doing successfully, but don’t assume what worked for them will work for you. Depending on your audience and context, results will vary. For example, some experts say that one-step forms are always more efficient, whereas others claim that multi-step forms are superior. So who’s right? Well, they are equally right and equally wrong. Tests have found that sometimes one-step forms work better, and sometimes multi-step forms do. Don’t assume. Test what works best for your audience and context. And if someone says that red buttons are better than purple ones, don’t believe them. There is no universally superior button color but you might want to test contrasting colors.

Be bold and break rules

You might have heard about Google testing 41 shades of blue for the toolbar on Google pages but unless you work for Google, forget about it. Minor changes will typically lead to minor improvements, and to find out if those minor improvements are statistically valid, you will need massive amounts of traffic. If you want results, you will need to make more drastic changes than that. You will often have to bend, if not break company design guidelines in order to achieve substantial improvements. While doing so, it’s important to work closely with brand managers, so you do not step on anyone’s toes. Examples of what to test include images, tone and functionality.

Don’t be greedy (limit your test)

Unfortunately, not everyone has the benefit of large, steady streams of visitors, and traffic volumes may limit you to running an A/B split test. Maybe you think changing the primary headline, main copy text, an image, call-to-action and a button will improve conversions. Do not, however, test all the changes at once in a single A/B test if you want to know what exactly causes the improvement (if any) and to find the best combination (for example, what call to action works best with which image). In the previous example, there are five page sections (elements) with two variations each. They make 32 possible combinations. If you run that as an A/B test, you will have no idea what made the difference.

Calculate estimated time to completion

It is possible to create a test that will take years to end. Say you have six elements and three variations per element, your test page gets 5,000 page views per day, your conversion rate is 4 percent, and you expect an improvement of 10 percent. That multivariate test would take 30 years to complete even if you include all visitors in your test. Use a duration calculator to find out whether the test you’re planning to run is actually reasonable. Google’s calculator can be found at http://goo.gl/g8VQ.

Assess risks

While you might think of testing as gambling, rest assured that the odds are on your side. What you risk is a smaller amount of conversions in the short term, but what you can gain is an overall increase of conversions in the long run. Even when your hypothesis turns out to be wrong, you will learn something — how to avoid making costly mistakes in the future. To minimize risks, you might wish to expose a smaller share of your visitors to the test. But bear in mind that if fewer visitors are included, the test will take longer to complete.

Validate your implementation

Before your test goes live, make sure to test implementation. Factors that could skew results include the prevalence and accuracy of test scripts (for instance, ensure that the goal script is implemented only on the actual goal page) and the loss of referral data. Some tools, Google Website Optimizer included, automatically validate the test for you. Do not blindly trust this because it is possible for your implementation to be flawed regardless of what the automatic validation indicates.

Avoid conflicting tests

If you set up two or more simultaneous tests sharing the same goal, you risk inaccurate results. Say you want to increase conversions by running one test to find out what headline works best, and a second test to find out which image works best. The two tests won’t share data, so you won’t know to which combination of image and headline a converting visitor has been exposed. If running several tests, make sure they won’t add noise and uncertainty to each other.

Look out for side effects

Wanting improvement is good. Being too eager to achieve results can, however, inadvertently lead to making costly mistakes — ones that are difficult to spot, too. While changes might increase conversions for one goal, they could decrease conversions for another. Typically a test is set up for only one goal. If running an A/B test with Google Website Optimizer, use Google Analytics and custom variables to “tag” visitors. Then you will be able to find out how other goals and general visitor behavior are impacted by your test and its different variations. (Read more about the use of custom variables at http://goo.gl/NjLV.) It’s also possible to include the goal script for Google Website Optimizer on multiple goal pages. But if you do that, both goals will be summed up together, and you won’t know the performance of each individual goal.

Try segmented testing

The standard way of running a test assumes that one size fits all. While running any test is better than not testing at all, it is possible that one alternative or combination is better for direct traffic and another is better for traffic from Google AdWords (just an example). Therefore, viewing the results for different segments will give you deeper insights. You can use custom variables to keep track of variations in Google Analytics and advanced segments to see how the different variations performed for different segments. You can also have a look at page 25 in The Techie Guide for Google Website Optimizer (http://goo.gl/oXr7) or find a tool more suitable for segmented testing at www.whichmvt.com.

Challenge the winner

So you’ve reached a statistically valid result of a test and announced the winner. Are you done now? No. Testing is not a one-time practice. Rather, it should be part of your process for continuous improvement. It’s not only possible but likely that a variation will perform even better than the winner. That’s why a winner should be challenged from time to time. At some point, there will always be a new winner.

About the Author: Lars Johansson is the co-founder of Ampliofy (Web analytics products) and inUse Insights (Web analytics consultancy). inUse Insights is a Google Analytics Certified Partner and Google Website Optimizer Certified Partner. Lars blogs about Web analytics and testing at www.WebAnalysts.info.

Vertster Releases Multivariate Testing Solution For Agencies

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:04:00 GMT

Conversion testing and optimization software provider Vertster released a new white-label partnership model and they are on the lookout for interactive advertising and search engine optimziation agencies.

The Vertster Optimization Suite enables agencies to offer multivariate testing services to gauge the effectiness of messages, images, page structure, pricing, and other factors on online conversion rates.

"Vertster allows us to take the guess work out of landing page design and apply the scientific method to conversion testing. For one client, we have increased lead conversion by over 600%. We recommend them to anyone who wants to dramatically boost ROI from online campaigns.", states Chris Sietsema, Associate Director of Online Marketing of Mighty Interactive.

Users of the white-label platform will be able to customize the backend, adding custom CSS rules to alter design (e.g., color, icons, etc.).

Customer Experience Platform at Amadesa

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:20:00 GMT

Website testing and personalization platform Amadesa announced the release of its Customer Experience Platform™ today at eTail West. Amadesa software analyzes user behaviors to guide choices and eventually outcomes (read conversions) - an increasingly essential part of the Web success matrix.

The platform allows users to optimize interactions on their websites through A/B & multivariate testing (element and/or page-level testing), segment testing (from sources like referring search engine, paid search keyword, etc.), automated persona targeting and product recommendations. The automated persona targeting leverages a predictive analytics algorithm that takes into account more than 25 characteristics like IP address, browser and screen resolutions, day and time of day, etc.

Amadesa’s “virtual layer” technology can be applied to shopping carts, forms, subscriptions and registrations to simultaneously test design, functionality and persuasion elements. This enables clients such as Chicago.com and SmoothFitness.com to know what prompts the best customer response, without working with or around IT teams.

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