Tips to Effectively Optimize Your Website with Multivariate Testing

By Ruben Corbo

If you follow the branding convention adopted by most large companies, you’d note a uniform application of key branding elements, such as logo, slogan and trademarks across all their corporate websites. Big business also optimizes all forms of online interaction, be they blog, social media profiles or corporate portals. To optimize your website, you also can implement tactics that larger players use, provided you adopt a few essential tips and perform multivariate testing thoroughly.

Basics of Multivariate Testing

In multivariate testing, you select specific attributes of your website and test them simultaneously. This technique is also called “multi-variable testing” or “multi-variable assessment,” and the variables here refer to the website’s attributes. These include user-friendliness, design, layout, compatibility with smart phones, and browsing requirements—say, browser type and security level, depending on the page a user is reading. Unlike multivariate testing, A/B testing only focuses on two operational scenarios and assesses a single attribute.

Website Optimization 101

Also known as portal enhancement, website optimization covers the mishmash of things—say, esthetic, programming and security—that a company does to elevate the stature of its website in search engine rankings, increase conversion rates and generate cash in the long term. To perform website optimization, adopt a tactic that fits your budget and operational model. You either do it yourself or use online tools to help you convert traffic to online sales. You also can hire an SEO specialist to analyze your content and search ranks, track conversion rates, and rummage in the website’s data to understand what’s going on from an optimization standpoint.

Running Effective Multivariate Tests

To run an effective multivariate test, you should understand not only the fundamentals of the test but also things like usage requirements and testing steps.

Usage Requirements

You typically would need multivariate testing if you operate a highly trafficked, complex website with stringent coding requirements and security layers. This type of testing is also suitable if you want to improve the “look and feel” of the portal, an element that becomes as important as ever for a site that experiences heaving readership on a daily basis. For a modest-traffic portal, such as blog or personal website, I recommend A/B testing instead.

Testing Steps

Follow these steps to run an effective and efficient multivariate test, but remember again that you can use online tools or hire an expert if you run a complex operation or simply need to have a specialist coordinate the assessment.

1. Evaluate your website to determine what must be fixed.
2. Set the way you want to test batches, specifying such attributes as user-friendliness, security, information and “look and feel.”
3. Choose test variations.
4. Run the multivariate test.
5. Analyze results and decide whether a new test is needed to confirm the results.
6. Implement the results on your website—that is, fix or improve it according to the results.

Take-Away

Believe it or not, your website says a lot about your company, how seriously you take online commerce, and the operational importance you ascribe to the comfort of readers, shoppers and your existing customers. So adopt effective measures to optimize your corporate portal. In a digital era in which the first impression invariably counts, it is in your company’s economic interests to design and deploy an attractive yet informative website. Multivariate testing can help in this process, but make sure you do your homework in advance, apply specific steps, and glean relevant information from specialized portals.