• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, February 1, 2012

Ask questions and get quick answers on what consumers value more. That's the beauty of tools that help marketers test multiple variables on Web site pages or in paid-search ads. It didn't take long for Teju Prabhakar to discover that setting up A/B multivariate testing to determine what drives the highest conversions becomes nearly impossible without the correct tools.

So, the director of marketing of Soap.com, an Amazon-owned Quidsi ecommerce site, deployed SiteSpect's platform for multivariate testing, as well as behavioral targeting across the five sites.  Integrated last year, the technology was up and running in October across all of its ecommerce sites: Soap.com, Wag.com, YoYo.com, Beautybar.com and Diapers.com.

The process allows marketers to make two variations of a Web page to compare. Over time, visitors choose the one they prefer by clicking or downloading the content on the site. Analytics supports the version of the page producing the best outcome.

Initially, conversion tests on soap.com focused on comparing messages that support some sort of value, while the other page emphasized convenience -- for example, comparing a 15%-off discount on the consumer's first order against what Prabhakar calls the "no-offer test." It doesn't offer a discount, but rather faster shipping at no charge or better access to a service.

The soap.com landing page test that compared the discount to the offer performed about the same, according to Prabhakar. "It was good to know we could go out with that type of messaging and not reduce our on-site conversions rate," he said.

Information collected by sophisticated online advertising platforms continues to drive the growth for these tools that apply multivariate testing, as companies look to understand how to use the data. Prior to implementing SiteSpect, Quidsi didn't have a way to A/B test the messages on the Web sites. "You want a clean, random test to prove test A can do significantly better than test B," Prabhakar said.

Quidsi isn't the only company to implement the analysis tool. SiteSpect also picked up 1-800-DENTIST, a U.S. dental-patient matching service, as a customer.