• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, November 5, 2013

A/B and Multivariate testing can tell marketers not only what's working on a Web page, but why the change won't work. Trulia discovers this each time its marketers and analytics specialists test changes in color, sizes of buttons, and more.

Trulia uses SiteSpect's A/B and multivariate testing technology to help optimize the conversion rates on its Web site. This means testing how the site looks in terms of site navigation variation, content and forms, as well as how it works. Data from SiteSpect experiments guides Trulia to make changes that improve the experience of online visitors, leading to better customer engagement and loyalty.

"Any time we put out a new feature, SiteSpect allows us to run a side-by-side experiment, and then use data and analytics to determine whether it's a good thing for site visitors on both desktop and mobile," said Dan Voorhies, director of analytics at Trulia.

Trulia began using SiteSpect in late 2011, testing a variety of pages that run deep into the funnel. It helps Voorhies determine where to arrange models like crime maps and school maps, as well as colors and design of buttons. Earlier this year the site did a major a redesign of the Property page, boosting the size of the photos and creating a cleaner design such as changing the color of buttons to orange. The side-by-side tests identified when visitors clicked through to maps and listing agents more often.

Trulia -- an online marketplace for home buyers, sellers, renters, real estate agents and brokers -- reported $40.3 million in Q3 2013 revenue on Oct. 29, up 117% year-over-year. There are more than 4 million real estate and rental listings nationwide, and nearly 35 million unique visitors a month. The company did not directly attribute the rise in revenue to testing, but the numbers clearly identify a rise in site visitors. The housing market also saw vast improvements in certain geographic areas this year.

There are 36,401 subscribers, with nearly 35 million unique visitors monthly searching through the 4 million real estate and rental listings nationwide in Q3. It helped push net income attributable to common stockholders for the quarter to $7.0 million or $0.19 on a diluted basis, compared with a net loss of $1.7 million -- or $0.19 per share on a basic and diluted basis -- in the year-ago quarter.

Some of the improvements coming from the SiteSpect deployment point to screen-size photos on mobile, as well as better access to information on crime and local amenities such as banks and schools. Changes also provide color-coded mobile searches to help prospective home buyers to distinguish new properties they have seen. For example, black represents new, unviewed homes, and grey means the visitor already viewed them.