Free Multivariate Testing, Courtesy of Google

Google has recently begun offering a public beta of something it calls Website Optimizer.

Here are three descriptions of what it does:

• Google: "Without extensive experience or resources, you can run multivariate experiments on landing page content, including headlines, promotional copy, and images."
• My plain English description: Website Optimizer allows clients to test different designs for the same web page to see which one is most popular with visitors.
• A longer-winded description from my recent Content Analytics report: "A/B testing discovers whether users prefer item A or item B. In the past, in-person interviewers asked people their preferences. Online testing speeds the process by tracking which item web visitors click on, or prefer, more often. Multivariate testing is a much more sophisticated form of A/B testing; it could be called “A–Z testing.” It displays many more options (say, 25 to 50) and, using statistical methods, discerns which ones are the most popular. Rather than forcing users to choose between polar opposites, multivariate testing lets them select from a much wider array of options, and hence highlights preference clusters. It offers shades of gray, rather than black or white. Extremely difficult when done by hand, multivariate testing is much easier in the online world."

Google's offering this service for free is a huge step forward. Ten years ago, similar testing of different product package designs would have cost tens of thousands of dollars. A company would have had to create paper mockups, convince appropriate test subjects to take time out of their day and turn up for interviews, and then hire interviewers to ask the right questions and collate the answers.

The Web has changed all that. Now, webmasters can craft alternative graphic designs quickly, users can click at home (and often not even know they're taking a test), and analysis engines can collate the results in realtime.

Within the past several years, a number of Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors have offered such services for a fee: Kefta, Offermatica, Optimost, and SiteSpect. While Google's entering the marketplace may cannibalize some of their business, I think overall it will increase it. A whole lot of companies -- and especially small and medium-size businesses -- don't even know such testing is possible. Google once again serves as an educator for the world at large.

Finally, Google seems to have smartened up with the Website Optimizer rollout. While it trickled out Gmail availability -- the scarcity making Gmail the "in" thing to have as well as enabling Google to increase scalability in a controlled fashion -- the "instant on" Google Analytics release was an absolute disaster. The Google Analytics service was overwhelmed with users to the point where it couldn't deliver up-to-date metrics. Eventually, Google  stopped signups for about a month while it bolstered up its backend servers. It looks like the Website Optimizer product manager has actually paid attention to history and is using the Gmail rollout strategy of trickling it out.

Comments

[software testing services]

Thank you for sharinh you perspective for Google. Google is the largest search engine. There is nothing which you can't search on it....It searching algorithm is quite strong one..

[сумка из джинсов]

When it comes to free use of something really pricy, be sure that they test it on you. Just be aware of it.