Official Blog
Look Inside a 1,024 Recipe Multivariate Experiment
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Do small changes make a big difference? In the world of landing page testing, they certainly can. A few weeks ago, we ran one of the largest multivariate experiments ever: a 1,024 recipe experiment on 100% of our US-English homepage. Utilizing
Google Website Optimizer
, we made small changes to three sections on our homepage (see below), with the goal of increasing the number of people who signed up for an account. The results were impressive: the new page performed
15.7% better
than the original, resulting in thousands more sign-ups and personalized views to the homepage every day.
Below is a screenshot of the homepage before the test and the three sections we focused on:
And here are examples of various fonts, messages, and colors we tested:
Section 1:
(The words "Sign Up" were put in all caps)
Section 2:
(We placed these bubble messages to the left of the word "Sign Up")
Section 3:
(We experimented with these different banners in that area)
Can you guess which combination of elements performed the best?
(humming "Jeopardy" music)
If you guessed the Original "Sign Up" Font (section 1) + Red Bubble "Sign Up" (section 2) + White "Don't Just Watch, Participate" box (section 3), you win!
Winning Page:
While we could have hypothesized which elements result in greater conversions (for example, the color red is more eye-catching), multivariate testing reveals and proves the combinatorial impact of different configurations. Running tests like this also help guide our design process: instead of relying on our own ideas and intuition, you have a big part in steering us in the right direction. In fact, we plan on incorporating many of these elements in future evolutions of our homepage.
Curtis Lee, Product Marketing Manager, recently watched
"KFC Freestyle Delonte West."
P.S. If you need assistance running tests on your website, there are many Google Website Optimizer
authorized consultants
who can help. Special thanks to
VKI Studios
who assisted on ours.
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