Online Businesses Doing More With Less In An Uncertain Economy With Web Optimization Solutions

Ever gone online and had a frustrating experience? Maybe you weren't happy with the way content was displayed or found it impossible to find what you were seeking. That's the unhappy picture that visitors face when shopping on websites that have not been fine-tuned (or "optimized"). The good news is, companies realize that not enhancing their websites lowers their revenue and profits and are now doing everything they can to improve online shopping experiences in a recessionary economy.

Increasingly, large online retail companies are turning to testing and targeting technology to enhance consumers' online experiences. Multivariate Testing allows companies to present many variations of information and discover which variation you prefer while targeting enables companies to understand you better as a customer so that they can deliver relevant information, such as coupons. This brand of web optimization can help drive Internet sales during a time when visitors are holding on tight to their wallets .

One example of a business using testing and targeting technology to enhance the customer experience is well-known destination site VEGAS.com, which features a plethora of Las Vegas travel and hospitality choices -- from hotels to shows to tours to front-of-the-line nightclub passes, and then some. More than 2.5 million visitors visit VEGAS.com websites every month. The company found that it needed to get a handle on how best to present their vast array of travel and hospitality choices in order to keep visitors online.

To do that, VEGAS.com ran a test to discover what combination of online security messaging components would be most conducive to increasing sales conversion rates for site visitors. The business simultaneously tested four security elements, three text treatments and their layout on five different places within the site to discover the winning combination. The winning variation produced significant improvements across multiple key performance indicators, including site abandonment, visitor page views per session, and overall conversion rates.

Overstock.com, the well-known Internet retailer offering brand-name merchandise at everyday low prices, follows a similar approach to VEGAS.com. In relatively little time, Overstock.com maximized its conversion rates and average order values by globally testing new product page designs against current page layouts.

Another web site you might have shopped online that takes testing seriously is CSN Stores, which offers more than one million goods on more than 200 web sites in niche market sectors.

CSN Stores has credited testing and targeting business SiteSpect with creating 7 percent of its 2007 sales growth, thanks to the SiteSpect's patent-pending A/B and multivariate testing solutions. SiteSpect allowed CSN Stores to easily run tests to determine visitor visitor responses to variations in site content, search functionality, and features. Based on the test results, CSN Stores enhanced its search capability to help customers more quickly find the products they wanted, improving the user experience and increasing sales. Also, CSN Stores was able to discover and use alternate image sizes that elicited higher response rates.

Eric J. Hansen, president and founder of SiteSpect, says businesses have a multitude of choices when it comes to getting started with testing and targeting.

"We're seeing more and more businesses move from simple A/B testing, where you test one or more variations of a single element to see which one your consumers choose, to multivariate testing, where you try out variations of more than two elements," Hansen said. "Multivariate testing shows you not only which combination of elements increased conversions, but also shows you which individual elements influenced visitor behavior versus those that did not."

"During a recessionary economy, it is more crucial than ever for Internet consumers to find what they want and have a satisfying shopping experience," Hansen summarized. "Internet marketers must test and optimize their websites to generate more traffic to a site, keep them engaged, and funnel them towards conversions that generate revenue -- or risk going out of business."

== About SiteSpect ==

SiteSpect enables Internet marketers to optimize website and mobile web effectiveness through testing and targeting technology. By testing many variations of landing pages, product descriptions, search results, and buy-flows, SiteSpect empowers marketers to maximize every aspect of their website or mobile web offering. For more information, visit www.SiteSpect.com or call 617-859-1900.