Todd Sumamno
Every now and then, you hear Internet marketing gurus use phrases like “multivariate testing,” “website optimization,” and “A/B testing.”
You wonder if they are speaking a language you should learn to expand your company’s market share and survive in the e-commerce battle.
Relax; this is not a new language you need to learn. These concepts are not complicated. With the right approach and some effective legwork, you can perform multivariate testing and optimize your company’s website.
Some Fundamentals Before We Move On
To understand Multivariate Testing, you need to have a website first. If you don’t have one, you can check for web design auckland and get your site up and running.
Now, let’s explain some basics about what we’re talking about here. When search engine optimization (SEO) specialists talk about “website enhancement” and “website optimization,” they mean the same thing—which is, roughly speaking, a set of tactics you adopt to make your website appealing.
Here the word “appealing” covers everything, from instructiveness to aesthetics, but the most important thing is conversion rate. In other words, your website has to be designed in such a way that customers decide to buy your products or services.
Multivariate testing means setting a list of specific variables and evaluating two or more simultaneously in a tightly scrutinized experiment. The key is to be consistent in the test, though.
Multivariate Testing Tips
Assess Your Portal
Gauge your website’s overall condition, and pay attention to things like content, social media orientation, FAQ sections, and e-commerce approach. Also, figure your overall search rankings and average conversion rates. Then, decide what needs to be fixed.
Schedule Test Batches
Once you’ve figured out elements to be corrected, group them in batches. Determine testing priority as well as potential combos that may yield the best result in a cost-efficient way.
Specify Test Iterations
In multivariate testing lingo, iteration is synonymous with a variation. Here, you should determine how to test various elements in the batches. For example, if you find out that five things need to be fixed on the website, determine whether you would modify and test Item 1 through Item 5, or whether you would assess only the first three items, or yet whether you would rather evaluate the only Item 1, Item 5 and Item 2—in that order.
Perform the Multivariate Test
Perform the multivariate test using tools that allow you to do website optimizations.
Interpret Results
Once the results are in, pay attention to things like consistency and effectiveness. In other words, interpret the results with an eye for detail, especially things that pop up consistently in the results.
Deploy an Updated Portal
Implement your website the iteration that yielded the best combo of desired results, consistency, and effectiveness—but don’t forget “conversion rate” because the last thing you want is a portal that looks nice but cannot help your company generate one cent in sales.
Bonus: Search the Right Keywords to Bring The Right Traffic
The best keywords are those that have lots of competition, often in the millions, because those are the ones that are searched for the most, cause and effect people! It isn’t easy to rank for those keywords, but there is a way.
When doing keyword research, there are always long tail keywords. A longtail keyword is simply a phrase with the main keyword in it.
Example:
Main keyword: Computers
Long Tail: Buy Cheap Computers with 4gb RAM
If you look at the competition for most any popular main keywords, it is usually very high. Keywords like money, credit cards, loans, mortgage, insurance, health, cell phones, computers, laptops, cars, the list can go on and on.
Ranking for these keywords is going to be a long hard road. So, what you need to do is target the long tails for them and rank for those.
Let’s say you want to rank for cell phones, which has 2,700,000 competing sites with allintitle search query. So, you need to find a couple of good long tails that still have a good amount of searches and much less competition, for example, cheap cell phones (15,000 competing sites) and buy cell phones (8,910 competing sites).
Next, you need to build links with those phrases in the anchor text. Over time, your site will rank for those long tails. Still, because the main keyword cell phones are in those longtails, your website will inadvertently begin to climb in the SERPS for cell phones, depending on the link-building efforts. The quality of the backlinks will get there sooner or later.
Makes sense?
You can do this repeatedly with any keywords, but again you always need to check Page 1 of the results because some keywords are just not worth it. After all, too many big guns sit on Page 1, all though nothing is impossible. It just takes more effort, experience, and time.
Take-Away
To perform a successful multivariate test, familiarize yourself with the concept of website optimization, a key component of today’s e-commerce tactics.
Then, understand the steps involved in an effective multivariate assessment and how they can help elevate your organization’s marketplace stature.
Don’t forget, in the process, that you can always reach out to an SEO specialist or use specialized tools if the need arises. Otherwise, the process is not complex, and you can coordinate it on your own.
