Until recently it cost thousands of dollars a month to subscribe to sophisticated testing services that would let you gather empirical data about proposed website design changes.
Now there’s Google’s Website Optimizer. This free, powerful, simple tool lets even the most analysis-phobic website owners test and evaluate proposed changes to their websites.
I attended a presentation at Google tonight (gotta love living in Fremont) by Tom Leung, the product manager for Website Optimizer. As always, I listened with an ear for tidbits useful to independent professionals and solopreneurs.
What Website Optimizer Does
Website Optimizer lets you test changes to your website. For example, say you want to change your newsletter sign-up box and you and your webmaster have different ideas about how it should look. Instead of discussing the change ad infinitum, just test it. With Website Optimizer, you add a little Javascript to your page and Google then shows half of your visitors one version and half the other version. Website Optimizer then measures which version results in more newsletter sign-ups. Simple as that.
Google uses this tool all the time to fine-tune their websites. If it’s good enough for Google, it’s good enough for you.
Google Website Optimizer for Independent Professionals
Website Optimizer lets you do simple A/B testing (like the newsletter sign-up example above), or you can do sophisticated multivariate testing on a bunch of webpage elements at once. I don’t recommend the latter for independent professionals since accurate multivariate testing requires more website traffic than our websites are likely to get.
Tom offered a couple of rules of thumb for testing. You need at least 100 “conversions” (website visitors taking the action you want) in order to have your test be statistically valid. He also said that for small sites, you want to make sure you have at least 500 page views a month before you even think about doing any testing.
Some Lessons Learned
Tom and his crew have been working with this tool for a few years now and identified a few take-home points:
- Website testing is a continuous process. You’re never really finished. There’s always something else you could/should be testing.
- You need compelling content, enough website traffic, and the discipline to make tough decisions about what is worth testing and what isn’t.
- Keep your testing simple. This is particularly important for small, low-budget sites.
- Finally, and most importantly, realize that this is an arms race. Whoever has the best-converting website will be able to pay more for leads acquisition from AdWords and similar programs. This excellent article, Google Website Optimizer 101, shows how to leverage your gains from your improved conversion rate.
On a personal note, I’ve got to say that I love this tool. I’ve been trying for years to genuinely divorce myself from attachment to my crackpot idea du jour, and this is just the ticket for that.
