Today’s post looks at examples from WhichTestWon’s gaming industry archive covering 3 conversion goals: social sign on, product registration from offline purchase, and user registration. Before reading the results, take a moment to predict which design outperformed the other.

Sign In With Facebook

Version A:

Version B:

One of these landing pages resulted in more than 2x the clicks on the Facebook Sign In button.

The winner was Version A, with its BOB (big orange button) and clear call to action. Surprisingly, 55% of voters got this one wrong.

Product Registration

Version A:

Version B:

Which presentation resulted in 40.1% more non-required registrations after installing a game purchased offline?

A whopping 78% chose Version B, but Version A was the winner. The value propositions in Version A are more specific than B’s — gamers expect tips and tools to be free, and “content” is less tangible than “free town.” Version A also implies more value, points redeemable at a Sims Store is more compelling than simple access to free items made by other players.

This test also demonstrates that despite the popularity and fame of a game like Sims 3, gamers are influenced by copy. If it was just about demand for the game, we wouldn’t see such a spread in conversion.

User Registration

Version A:

Version B:

Which version increased free registrations by 6% and paid sign ups by 15%?

53% got this one wrong — it’s version B. If you’re eyes are keen, you noticed the log in area at the top of the page was also removed on the winning version. IMVU first tested 640 recipes using MVT (multivariate testing). This A/B test was a follow-up to validate MVT results. Multivariate data revealed removing the log in area was responsible for 10.2% lift, vs just 3% for the hero shot.

Testing inspiration

No matter what industry you’re in, these tests are all good examples of what you should be testing – calls to action (placement, design, labeling, colors, etc), presentation of value propositions (headlines, body copy, format, placement) and testing radical redesigns where you may discover something as simple as a log in area has an impact.

The stats on how many professional online marketers guess the winner wrong reminds us how important a testing program is to conversion optimization.

If you’re looking for a great event to learn more about testing, check out WTW’s Live Event in Austin, Texas this May. Or, register to speak and share your own testing expertise.

Cart totals in checkout – best practice?

Back in 2007, Elastic Path conducted an audit of the Internet Retailer Top 100 for our Ecommerce Checkout Report. At that time, only 14% of checkouts displayed cart review boxes in checkout. Conversion rates were 60% higher for the sites that didn’t show cart totals.

What’s changed in the last 5 years? I checked out the current IR50 this week and found a 50/50 split between showing cart contents and not. It’s certainly trendy (perhaps it’s been touted as best practice at conferences like Internet Retailer), with Apple, Walmart and Sears adopting it.

Which test won?

Marketing Experiments’ test site was not disclosed, but web clinic attendees were live-polled which version, showing cart totals or not, resulted in higher conversion. Overwhelmingly, the audience selected the underperforming version.

Gut feel lost. As it so often does.

The winner was the version that didn’t show cart contents in checkout. The relative conversion rate difference between winner and loser was 28.6%, and a full 8 points higher in absolute conversion rate.

This is an isolated test, your mileage may vary. But we learn 3 important lessons from this case.

1. Gut feel fails. Often.

2. “Best practice” fails. Often.

3. Following the leader can fail. If this ecommerce site blindly emulated Apple or Walmart, it would have left big money on the table.

That also goes for blindly following a case study mentioned in a blog post. Test it for yourself. This test is a particularly good one to start with in checkout, as it’s generally believed to help users, but appears to cause distraction or second thoughts in the funnel, despite its popularity in ecommerce design.

But how you display the features may be helping or hurting your conversion rates.

This week’s WhichTestWon feature test sought to discover if removing a “refine your search” toolbar above results on the UK Tool Centre website would increase click through rate. The hypothesis being the filter was a distraction, while pushing clickable results below the fold.

Control

Treatment

Despite the search page having more than 100 product results, the test version without the filter improved click through by 27%. While conversion rate was not reported, the significant increase in click through widens the funnel for conversion.

I myself found this result surprising, as I tend to take advantage of filters. But making decisions on what you like personally without testing is risky. What matters is what the majority of your visitors prefer, and what influences positive behaviors on your site.

If you use horizontal filters, this is a great testing idea, whether text-based or image-based.

But the same concept applies to the “banners” and featured merchandising zones so common on search and category pages.

Challenge your love affair with “hero shots”

Graphic subcategory presentation is another animal. It pushes down product results but may be effective — another candidate for testing.

If you’re using in-category cross-selling as above, make sure you test it. It may be distracting as it interrupts the user’s task of finding a product matching the search or category term. The design element may also act as a roadblock to the eyes that discourages exploration below it. It may appear as the end of search results if the user’s fold cuts across it.

It’s not just about the fold, it’s about meeting customer expectations. When you click a category link, do you expect a list of product or a maze like this?

Only a small portion of this category page’s real estate is actual product results.

Relevance matters. When a user selects a brand category, why show a competing brand?

Have your cake and eat it to? Why not test an expand/collapse implementation, like Orange Mobile?

Note tht the click through or conversion differential in such a test could also be due to page load speed. Some filter features increase load time, which increases abandonment.

The UK Tool Centre example is not intended to show that no horizontal feature is a best practice. The takeaway is to test this feature on your site if you currently use it. You may be surprised at the improvement of removing what is believed to be a useful usability feature.

In our webinar E-Commerce Conversion Optimization from Entry to Checkout, Chris Goward of WiderFunnel shared several real A/B tests that bust a few best practice myths. We’ll examine 4 here (to see ‘em all, why don’t you check out the replay?)

1. Promote the heck out of your promotions

Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Put psychological pressure on your customer to convert now instead of checking out competitors, sleeping on the decision or letting the sale event expire. Do it with “BUY NOW” labels, quantity in-stock countdowns or suggest the sale price might not be around tomorrow.

It’s actually sound advice that is expected to convert like crazy for some websites. But it doesn’t work for every site.

WineExpress tested an urgent call to action “order in the next [remaining time] and get $0.99 shipping” during a 24-hour shipping promotion event.

The result was a 7% decrease in conversion rate for the version with the shipping offer.

The marketing insight is, the wine connaisseur is not a deal-hunter. She is less likely to respond well to aggressive sales incentives.

A follow up test confirmed this belief. WiderFunnel tested a larger call-to-action window with “on sale now” messaging.

The result was a 5% conversion rate lift, and 41% higher revenue per visitor for the original page, without the sale messaging.

For this business, perhaps testing an incentive of a wine connaisseur gift, such as a wine-saver or bottle opener combined with an urgency message would have outperformed the control. (An idea to test, not to implement just because it sounds like it could work.)

3. Follow web conventions

Peruse through the Internet Retailer Top 500 List and 99.9% or higher will present the add to cart button on the right hand side. It’s one of the most entrenched web design conventions we have in the Western world.

But does that mean it’s optimal?

According to research by Jakob Nielsen, user’s eye fixations skew heavily to the left side of a page.

Baby Age flipped image and call to action, placing the CTA on the left, which lead to a 16% boost in conversion rate.

Don’t be afraid to challenge conventional design!

4. Over-communicate security

Everyone’s scared to shop online, right? You’ve gotta remind folks you’re a secure site, yeah?

Using a security badge has helped improve conversion on countless sites, especially when proximal to the entry fields for financial information. We’ve even published 2 cases where conversion rate improved 4-6%.

But this isn’t a universal rule.

In this test by WiderFunnel, the version without the security seal won the test.

It really depends on the site.

Sometimes reminding folks about the risk of shopping online arouses FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).

The point of this post is not to say best practice doesn’t matter. Rather, take “best practice” advice under advisement, and put it to the (A/B) test on your site to see if it’s best practice for your industry, geography, customers, product and site context.

Understanding the dynamics behind a successful shopping experience is critical. You need to optimize the entire experience for your shoppers, from landing to checkout pages. Knowing how to do it right will determine whether you see a 5% revenue lift or 20%.

I’m excited to be joining Chris Goward from Wider Funnel for a webinar E-Commerce Conversion Optimization from Entry to Checkout. We’ll be covering the latest insights, research and strategies on how successful e-commerce sites maximize their conversion funnels.

You’ll learn:

• The causes behind shopping cart abandonment and how to mitigate it
• What on-page factors and variables improve conversions and revenue
• Critical areas to evaluate on your landing pages
  Case Studies: “How they were doing it wrong and what they did”

Webinar Details:
Date: September 27th, 2012
Time: 10:00am PT; 1:00pm ET

To join us, register today!

Click infographic to enlarge

Not surprisingly, the majority of site testers test calls to action. What is shocking is that only 49% test the checkout process. Even if your site doesn’t have a traditional checkout, you have a conversion funnel that you should be testing on a continual basis.

This list should give you an idea of elements to test this holiday season (or whenever the seasonal spike is for your business), but understand your priorities are not based on what others are doing. And remember that tests conducted earlier in the year may not have bearing for the peak season – for example promotions and offers, copy and imagery. Customer intent and behavior changes, even in the final two weeks before December 25. Strategize accordingly, and don’t be afraid to run a series of short tests throughout the holiday rush, taking advantage of higher traffic which translates into shorter test times.

Tweetable facts:

Companies that are happy with their conversion rates test on average 40% more tests than those who are unhappy Tweet This Stat

75% of ecommerce sites that test do between 1 and 5 tests/mo Tweet This Stat

72% of ecommerce site testers test call-to-action buttons Tweet This Stat

71% of ecommerce site testers test page layout Tweet This Stat

65% of ecommerce site testers test navigation Tweet This Stat

63% of ecommerce site testers test copy Tweet This Stat

49% of ecommerce site testers test promotions and offers Tweet This Stat

Only 49% of ecommerce sites test the checkout process Tweet This Stat

43% of ecommerce site testers test images Tweet This Stat

Only 13% of ecommerce site testers test security fields Tweet This Stat

In Marketing Experiments’ web clinic Headline Optimization: How testing 10 headlines revealed a 3-letter word that improved conversion more than major changes features a case study that tested — you guessed it — 10 headlines with various wording:

The top converting headline began with the word “get”:

And when arranged by conversion improvement, you can identify the top of the crop as headlines which emphasize what the user “gets” (value-centric), and the second tier focuses on taking action.

This is critical, because we may tend to think of affirmative verbs, or “commands” as more psychologically powerful.

Another example comes from paid search expert Mona Elesseily’s post 5 Tips To Fine Tune PPC Ad Copy. Mona advises to incorporate “power words” into copy.

Some examples of words I like to try in PPC testing are try, get, fast, online, etc. Here are some examples (altered to protect client confidentiality) of headlines with and without power words, along with their associated cost per conversion. This is based on a large sample size.

Get Eagle Talons – $7.75

Eagle Talons Fast – $10.24

Eagle Talons – OEM – $7.81

Parts of Birds Online – $12.10

What did we learn? Either “Get” or “OEM” were strong performers as opposed to mentioning speed. While fast shipping may be a benefit, we assume it looks cheesy in a headline or causes a few more hasty clicks than it should.

Is it as simple as start every headline with “get”?

Nope. But consider testing headlines that begin with this three-letter power word against similar value-centric words, and versus your action-centric headlines you’re already using. The point is value-centric words are more persuasive than action-centric. “Get” happens to be a good word to use, according to these two examples.

The term is typically used in context of the challenge of winning support for site testing or mobile development from higher-ups, crucial in getting these initiatives off the ground. In many organizations, HiPPOs are unwilling to slaughter sacred cows, even when data supports it, potentially leaving dollars on the table.

But the HiPPO should not be characterized as a Homer Simpson with a corner office, whose ignorance to testing / mobile / social / insert-shiny-object-here is holding everything back.

The HiPPO Identity

Without executive support, hands are tied (or at least greatly restricted) from testing impactful changes. Office politics and organizational structure can be a hindrance. Business culture can be risk-averse. Resources may be so constrained that management does not want to make room for testing.

Certainly, in some companies, HiPPOs simply do not see the value of testing and need persuasive education. But the HiPPO is not a dunce, and should not be approached as one.

The HiPPO Supremacy

One of the reasons the HiPPO is highly paid is it’s his or her responsibility to make a judgement call on proposed actions. Yes, to use “gut feel” to override “data-driven” proposals that look good on paper but may not work for the business. Data shouldn’t be blindly followed just because it’s data as much as it’s dangerous to follow gut feel. Decision making requires a combination of both.

Kevin Hillstrom, president of MineThatData comments on his blog:

As an analyst/manager, from 1988 – 1997, I railed against the concept of “The HiPPO”. I couldn’t believe how decisions were actually made. I couldn’t believe how the departments that I worked in were underfunded while VP positions were being added in large quantities. I felt frustrated that my data-driven ideas, all seemingly iron-clad and backed up with thousands of pages of tables and charts representing actual customer behavior, were not adopted.

As a Vice President, from 2001 – 2007, I became “The HiPPO”. I hosted hundreds/thousands of meetings, meetings where data was presented, data that I either didn’t believe was accurate, or had a philosophical difference of opinion with the presenter of information, leading me to decide something contrary to what the data suggested.

You have to be a VP/SVP/EVP/President/CEO to understand why data-driven arguments are ignored.

And you have to be an Analyst/Manager to understand how frustrating it is to not be listened to.

The HiPPO isn’t always right, but analysts and managers that can respect and empathize with higher-ups will experience less frustration. An understanding that some ideas are not kiboshed because the CEO doesn’t have a clue helps.

Analysts also need to understand their own interpretation of data may not be correct. Often times data is gathered to support an underlying bias, “I want to do this, so I’ll find data to support my goal.” Or, data may support action that is not in the long term interest of the company, or is not aligned with the vision, mission or market.

The HiPPO Ultimatum

Executives are often caught between a rock and a hard place, faced with job loss if sales and profit targets are not hit. This can make an executive understandably conservative with risk-taking that can impact the numbers, even when the exec sees value in testing. The exec’s neck is on the line, not the analyst.

Says Hillstrom: “The Analyst/Manager simply needs to understand that the risk/reward relationship is much riskier to the Executive than it is to the Analyst/Manager … this isn’t right/wrong, it ‘just is’.”

The HiPPO Legacy

Like legacy software and systems, some corporate cultures are outdated and may remain in use though newer tools are in place in the same organization. Sometimes a cultural revolution is a good thing. The HiPPO is not always right, and may not be open to embracing things that can move the organization forward.

An understanding of where the HiPPO is coming from is the first step towards building a bridge. This helps your approach — how you present information, what pain points to hit, what data to gather, and what to prioritize.

To understand the HiPPO, learn what keeps him or her up at night. What is your HiPPO responsible for? Who is he accountable to? What is her level of understanding of new technologies?

Then, gather data that will persuade the HiPPO. Says Avinash Kaushik, “Senior Managers are biased towards themselves, but they bow to customer data and competitive opportunities.”

On his blog, Avinash suggests 6 strategies you can use to gather case, customer and competitive ammo:

1. Implement an experimentation and testing program
2. Capture the voice of the customer through surveys, remote usability, etc.
3. Benchmark against your competition
4. Use competitive intelligence
5. Hijack a “friendly” website (optimize a friend or co-worker’s side project site and use as a case)
6. Call Avinash or other industry expert who can lend objective support

For fleshed out details of these strategies, check out the entire post.

To foster change, you need to build a bridge. Says Hillstrom:

How many times have you heard somebody say “that’s not how we do things around here?” Sometimes, the Analyst/Manger doesn’t have the experience to “build a bridge” between the past and the future … the Analyst/Manager simply blurts out a data-driven strategy that has risk associated with it, and is uncomfortable to the Executive.

Think about your mobile phone … your phone was the end result of a chain of events over two decades that allowed you to feel comfortable purchasing something via m-commerce. Take your Android phone and introduce it to somebody in 1992, and you’d cause that individual to freak out!! A “bridge” was built between land lines and cell phones, between old-school commerce and e-commerce and e-mail and m-commerce, enabling you to see the future and feel comfortable. An Analyst/Manager is well served to build a bridge between “the way we’ve always done things” and “the future”.

Changing your culture requires humility, solid data, great communication and patience.

Is A/B or multivariate testing the answer?

But split testing live with real customers carries risks. It’s not illegal, but customers who access your site from multiple devices or who clear cookies regularly may spot your inconsistencies. It may also mess with your paid search, shopping engine or email ads that contain prices.

To answer the question “should you test prices online?” I enlisted the Web’s top thinkers in testing to weigh in with their opinions, with a few of my own:

Just say no

Carlos del Rio, Director of Conversion Analysis & Digital Strategy with Unbounce:

The short answer is yes. But, there is a major caveat. Don’t do public testing. There are many places where it is illegal to arbitrarily vary your price, and any specific segmentation of that group can lead to other ethical/legal issues. Price testing should be handled like market research. Choose a controlled group and run them through the test scenario and offer them all the same end compensation for their time.

Justin Rondeau, Editor & Evangelist of WhichTestWon.com:

I’ve never really liked the idea of price testing, and each day we see negative reactions to companies who have conducted price tests via different segmentations, e.g., device used, geolocation, etc.

Prices will undoubtedly impact conversions and unless you are selling luxury goods the best deal will likely win out. However, the second it gets out that you are profiling users based on their device (like Orbitz did) you will lose a lot of credibility with prospective customers.

In my opinion, marketers should keep price testing out of their A/B and MVT tests. There are just so many other ways to optimize a site that will produce solid lifts without sacrificing integrity.

Do it, but get the timing right

Jon Powell, Senior Manager, Research and Strategy at MECLABS (Marketing Experiments / Marketing Sherpa)

Yes. The real question is “when is the best time to test price?”

If you already have established pricing, then I would avoid testing price first. Price is a key component in the perceived value exchange. Customers are weighing that number against how well they understand the value I am communicating to them. I should make sure I’m not dropping the ball on that before I start cutting into my company’s revenue potential (or taking the greater risk in trying to increase it).

I would first design a test sequence to determine if the presentation of the product(s) can be optimized to achieve an increase in my key performance indicator. I would also design a sequence of experiments to understand a channel’s impact on buyer behavior here as well before concluding that prices need to change.

What is the best approach to do so?

Once one gets to the point of testing price, the best approach starts with creating price points based on their projected impact to a greater business metric/need, like total revenue, new customer acquisition, etc. No matter which metric you choose, an optimal price point will be one that has a predictably positive financial impact on the business, be it short term or long term.

In other words, you’re going to have to do some math before you start your test. The only situation you will want to test a price that doesn’t have some sort of positive effect on business metrics is when you are simply testing to determine if you need to find a cheaper way to produce and make available your product (sometimes the majority of end users just won’t pay beyond a certain threshold).

Once you determine the metric you are trying to impact and why, you can use an approximation model to calculate suggested prices to test. If traffic allows, you will want to test a range of prices, and not just cheaper. Sometimes end users expect a higher price to completely buy-in to the perceived value of the product, and sometimes that higher price point will be responsible for bringing in an optimal amount of revenue, despite a reduction in orders.

Finally – in your test set up, do not forget to set up the additional tracking and auditing so that what you see can be verified and audited. Often times in a test, we make unintentional discoveries as a result of the additional detail, or in this case, the purchase data collected.

Do it, but stay in control

Chris Goward, Co-founder and CEO of WiderFunnel:

Price testing can be very revealing for e-commerce. The traditional economic model that says lower prices always increase demand doesn’t hold up in some cases.

Retailers are familiar with the effect the “95″ cent ending price has. It can communicate a discount and create more demand than other five cent price movements. Recent research also shows price size, boldness, color, sound and cultural considerations can boost sales.

Can you really raise your prices *and* increase your sales? In some cases, yes!

To test price, you have to make sure your testing tool is keeping a valid control and maintaining consistency across visitor sessions. You don’t want people in different sessions to see the price change. (The new Google Analytics Experiments wouldn’t be a good tool to use, for example.)

For price testing you should also optimize for net contribution margin, rather than just conversions or revenue. Your goal needs to be to optimize total profit as lower sales with higher margin could be a bigger win than higher sales with lower margin.

Try testing price treatment as well as the price amount too. Do color, size, cross-out comparison and even numbers make a difference? You should test that!

Rich Page, author of Website Optimization: An Hour A Day and co-author of Landing Page Optimization:

I think price testing is fine, and can have a good influence on conversion rates. The issue is more whether the marketer actually has control over the price being charged to test it.

Don’t presume you know what will work best, test many different combinations in an MVT for price display (colors, size, location), and savings (monetary versus percentage savings) to find the best converting.

Also, don’t forget to continue your test prices on your product pages through the rest of your shopping cart and checkout, otherwise you will risk confusing (and annoying your visitors).

Campaigns as a workaround?

Email and paid search campaigns support testing and allow you to some more leeway in price testing in offers and on landing pages. But as workarounds they are not perfect.

Email subscribers are a segment to themselves. Making pricing decisions based on existing customer response, or conversion on products visitors were not necessarily in the market for is not good practice. These tests can help you understand promotional marketing, but not optimal catalog pricing.

Paid search ad and landing page tests are better, but also have drawbacks. You can test various prices in search ads for response, but it’s tougher to control price visibility once the visitor navigates away from the landing page and back to the product through your menus.

Discrete price testing doesn’t reveal optimal price

In his latest book Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions, Tim Ash describes one of the limitations of site-wide price testing.

Most companies treat price as a discrete variable. If you try to test price as a discrete variable (e.g., you test three distinct prices—your current price, a specific lower price, and a specific higher price), you are only getting information about the exact prices you choose to test. You will know which one of the tested prices is better. But you will not know if any of them are at the best price for maximum profit. The only advantage to this approach is that it works with your landing page optimization tools, and can be tested like all the other discrete variables. If your only alternative is not to test price at all, then you should use spot testing—a little bit of something is better than a whole lot of nothing.

Price tests may have a very short half-life

Pricing is a variable that can have a very short “half life.” A price that “wins” in January when wallets are typically tighter may not be the optimal price in May, September or December. Economic changes, competitive changes, the launch of a new generation of a product or the addition of more product substitutes to your catalog can affect optimal pricing. A price testing strategy should factor this in, and regular re-tests should be performed.

There’s no definitive answer to whether you should test prices or not. There remains arguments for and against. If you do decide to go forward, consider the strategies, controls and measurement tools you need to ensure you are not testing prematurely, testing too narrow a range of prices, and are optimizing for profit, not conversion rate.

What does this mean for conversion optimization?

I asked website optimization expert Rich Page to weigh in on the changes:

I think Content Experiments is a step backwards for existing testers and users of Google Website Optimizer, particularly because there is no MVT ability anymore. There are also a few limits, including a maximum of 6 variations per test. The only big useful improvement I see is the ability to choose any of your existing analytics goals as your converion goal (this was limited in Google Website Optimizer). However, for people who are new to testing, it should help raise the profile of testing, at least.

Google states we can expect more changes and updates to its tool – let’s hope MVT (multivariate testing) makes a comeback. In the meantime, to accommodate MVT, GWO users should explore the other tools out there. In his recently launched book Website Optimization: An Hour A Day, Rich rounds up the alternative players in the testing space:

Mid-Level Testing Tools

Optimizely

This is a newer testing tool that is a step up from Google Website Optimizer in terms of its feature set. This tool is perfect for markets and designers who like tools with visual editors, because it has a great visual interface that allows you to easily design tests. Another benefit of this tool is that it allows you to easily implement tests on your website with minimal technical changes needed. You simply make the visual changes and then add some simple code on the pages that you want to test, and the tool takes care of everything else for you, including running the test and reporting on it.

Service plans are fairly low cost, and based on how much traffic your tests get, also offer extra functionality at the higher service levels. Plans start at $19 for the basic level and features, all the way up to $400 per month for sites with high traffic and users who want all the advanced features.

Visual Website Optimizer

This is another great visual design tool that lets you actually design tests based on your current pages, by rearranging and making edits to your pages using a simple to use WYSIWYG editor. It then gives you simple tags to place on your website for the version you just visually created, and then it begins showing the test variations to your visitors and running the test.

It also offers click maps for when you want to see what your visitors are clicking on during your tests, and basic visitor segmentation. This tool is very easy to use for someone who is new to testing and is relatively cheap with plans starting at $49 per month.

Unbounce

This testing tool is particularly valuable and unique. Unbounce allows you to create and test new web pages, rather than your existing pages like most other testing tools do. Unbounce lets you easily create your own pages (called landing pages) from a library of landing page templates that have built-in website optimization best practices. it then allows you to test different elements and even hosts them for you on their web servics. All you have to do is send traffic to these new pages to start testing and converting your visitors.

This tool is particularly ideal if you are selling single products or srvices that have a lead generation for and want to test and optimize them. It is also well suited to creating and tesitng paid search landing pages. A great benefit of this tool is that it requires no knowledge of programming code to creat the landing page and run teh tests and is much quicker to set up than any other testing tool. It’s also fairly cheap to use.

Enterprise Testing Tools

These testing tools offer advanced functionality and flexibility as well as full support and consulting to help with test implementation and test strategy. However, because of these advanced features, thse tools can often be very expensive and many companies will need to build a case for needing these tools.

Adobe Test&Target

This tool is considered by many to have the most functionality of all website testing tools. As the tool name suggests, in addition to offering testing functionality, this tool also offers great visitor targeting capabilities to target groups of your visitors and show them more relevant content. This usually increases the chance of them engaging and converting on your website. This tool also features the great ability to automate which best-performing content to show to your visitors, thus taking a lot of the manual work out of pushing winners live to various groups of your visitors.

This tool also integrates well with Adobe’s SiteCatalyst web analytics tool. This enables you to perform more in-depth test analysis if needed in SiteCatalyst, and to use any advanced visitor segments from SiteCatalyst to better segment and target your tests.

Autonomy Optimost

This tool is considered the other major enterprise testing website tool and is gaining rapid market share. It offers very similar functionality to the Adobe Test&Target tool, although it doesn’t offer as many targeting capabilities, and its integrated analytics offering doesn’t compare to the functionality of integrating Test&Target with Adobe Site Catalyst.

It does have some unique selling points, particularly its ability to easily create and test landing pages for paid search and email marketing purposes, and its strong banner ad testing capabilites. It also has a relatively simple implementation in comparison to other enterprise offerings, with an easy to set up single line of code able to test multple pages elements.

Optimost also comes with great consulting services to help with test implementation and strategy, and it also offers a full-service approach to your testing that will do everything for you, including test strategy and test implementation.

SiteSpect

This enterprise testing tool has a very unique website testing proposition that can often help remove technical barriers to implementing a testing tool (a common issue). This is because this tool actually runs behind the scenes and not directly on your website and requires no actual code on your website to test. This means that once you have set it up once, it is very easy to perform tests anywhere on your website. However, some organizations find it hard to work with their unique style of implementation, because it requires all your traffic to flow through their platform first in order to serve up the tests.

This tool has strong and unique features to help optimize your mobile website offerings and a great feature to help speed up your website performance, thus helping to increase engagement and conversions. However, this tool lacks some of the advanced testing functionality of Optimost and Test&Target. In particular, it lacks good targeting capabilities and doesn’t offer any in-house website analytics features. Overall, this tool is worth considering, particularily if you have complicated technical issues that limite your ability to add test code to your website.

Monetate

This enterprise tesitng tool isparticularly great for ecommerce websites. It has a great built-in CRM system and merchandising feature that allows you to test and optimize product placement. All of those features are essential for fully optimizing ecommerce websites. However, because it has so many diverse features, the testing capabilities aren’t as sophisticated as some of the other leading enterprise testing tools.

This tool also prides itself on its great easy-to-use interface, which is ideal for online marketers. Also, it requires very little technical work to make this tool work on your website, with just a simple code snippet needed for your website to use all its features. overall, this testing tool is definitely worth considering if you have an ecommerce website.

Want to read the entire first chapter of Website Optimization: An Hour A Day? Follow Rich on Twitter and receive a your free copy of chapter one. More than just a book on testing process, it contains a soup-to-nuts overview of how to optimize your website head to toe. (Disclosure: I was involved in the technical editing of this book.)