• by Masha Geller , July 10, 2003

MyFamily.com, the online network connecting families, has recently increased site conversion rates by 64%. And they have Omniture, a provider of web analytics to large websites, and their SiteCatalyst product to thank.

"One of the things we discovered since using SiteCatalyst is that the right information can empower our staff," said Daren Thayne, chief technology officer for MyFamily.com. "Before implementing the product, everyone in our organization had an opinion on the right user interface for our pages. A debate would ensue regarding making changes to portions of the site that resulted in paralysis because a consensus could not be made. Now, we have the philosophy of stop arguing about it, just test it."

SiteCatalyst enables marketing managers to see in real-time all the factors that influence the success of their online businesses. SiteCatalyst provides bottom-line information that measures the effectiveness of websites and marketing initiatives allowing for immediate action on factors that most influence success.

The above philosophy was put in place to test one of MyFamily's most important pages - the Deny Page. This page is shown when a visitor tries to access information that is reserved for paying subscribers. The goal of the page is to push the visitor toward subscription.

Thayne explained, "The deny page we had been offering provided relatively limited information. One of our engineers had the idea that if we provided visitors with slightly more information in a different format we would see an increase in conversions. Using this premise, we created a new page and ran an A/B Test comparison to determine which page performed best."

What MyFamily.com discovered, Thayne says, was "amazing." On the US Records Collection, the site saw a 64% improvement with the new page. On the U.K. and Ireland Collections - a 77% improvement with the new page. "On our Census Records Collection, we saw a lower rate of conversion with the new page so we reverted back to the original design for this collection. This would have been nearly impossible to accomplish without SiteCatalyst."