Google’s Website Optimizer can run small Taguchi tests — just use the main effects results instead of the combination report. But it’s difficult to run a test with more than 1000 combinations this way if you don’t have a ton of traffic.

Also, if you aim to improve a metric that’s already getting about a 20% conversion rate, you can confirm a 20% improvement (i.e., going from 20% to 24%) much more quickly than you can if you start with a metric getting a 1% conversion rate.

So if you’re optimizing a sales page getting 1%, you might need up to 60,000 visitors to confirm a 20% improvement (i.e., going from 1% to 1.2%). But going from 20% to 24% can be confirmed in about 1200 visitors.

The key is to find a metric that’s correlated with sales, and which starts out in the “sweet spot” of 10%-50% conversion rate.

There are two nice ways to do this in my experience. Break the page into multiple pages. Or measure something like “time on page”. Then you can measure something (visitors staying > 60 seconds, or visitors clicking to page 2) that starts with about a 20% conversion rate instead of something (sales) that starts with a 1% conversion rate.

To the extent that these other metrics are correlated with sales, you can speed up your testing by a factor of 10 or more.

For those who are interested, the Split Test Accelerator provides a way to run large tests with very little traffic. It offers faster tests than Google’s Website Optimizer, and it doesn’t cost hundreds or thousands per month like most hosted Taguchi solutions.

All of the tools mentioned in this post are good options, AFAIK. As mentioned before, the ability to find good factors to test is more important than the tool you use to a large degree. But some tools are out of some SBO’s budgets, and others take too long for sites with low traffic.

Alasdair, thanks for answering my comment.

Robert, thanks for answering too.

As i said, i`ve mencioned futurenowinc, and yours services, to my boss. Our site, it`s not optimized for sales. I´m trying to show them that investing on a company that offers services like yours the ROI will be garanted.

Sorry for my english, i`m portuguese.

Cumps,

We offer website optimization testing as well. In fact, all of our services have testing as an integral component.

Remember, the important part isn’t which tool you use to test — it’s knowing WHAT to test, and how to optimize the site according to visitor motivations.

Hope that helps!

-Editor, GrokDotCom

you can find more information on those tools and also Maxymiser and Offermatica (now Omniture) by simply googling them. I don’t think many will offer a ‘price list’ because the level of engagement will vary depending on what your organisation is looking to achieve from the multivariate testing.

i hope this helps

Kind regards,
Alasdair

A friend of mine talk to me about your site (grokdotcom.com), and he told me it has some usefull and valid SEO info.

I allready know google´s tool, but i`ve never heard before of
Optimost, SiteSpect, Verster .

I`ll do a search about the price and advise the company where i work to invest in those tools (if they could effort it)

Thanks for the usefull tips …

Grokdotcom does it again.

Google has recently released a new product: a testing tool called Website Optimizer to help sites maximize…

Thanks for the coverage of Multivariate testing, it’s an area that not many people know about just yet and as you say, the uplift in conversions can be very strong!

Just one point – the guys that charge monthly do so because it makes sense for many companies to perform this testing on an ongoing basis. Starting with testing on the homepage then moving to pages deeper within the site or PPC/CPM specific landing pages will give almost a year’s worth of work anyway so it’s more cost effective to enter into a contract than to approach each project separately.

There’s also continuous optimisation technology that monitors conversions then automatically optimises towards the best performing content. For some of our clients, running this on an ongoing basis for their homepage means their best performing content for time of day or time of year is always displayed prominently.

Google’s tool is quite rudimentary and the paid for tools offer a far more full featured product in order to justify their pricing.

You also missed a company; Maxymiser is a European based expert in this field, we have our own blog at http://maxymiser.blogspot.com and our website is at http://www.maxymiser.com

Kind regards,
Alasdair