Virtually Canadian Inc – Blog

I wrote a little article a couple of weeks ago about Google Website Optimizer. In that post, I explained what Google Website Optimizer is and how it worked. We concluded after that experiment that the Variation 1 had the most chance to beat the original version. Variation 2 was still better than the original version, but variation 1 seemed better.

Just to make sure, we did a follow up experiment where variation #1  became the original, and variation #2 become variationvariation #1. I liked variation #1 (newly original version)  better so I was sure that the follow up test was going to confirm the original experiment.

Wrong!

The variation #2 (newly variation #1) performed way better as the graph shows:

Follow up experiment - Google website Optimizer

As you can see, the number of conversions is way higher with the variation #1, which contradicts the first experiment.

The original version looks nicer, but the variation #1 is more straight forward and shows users where to click. In the end, having a pretty site doesn’t matter much if it doesn’t convert. A nice design varies also depending on the taste of people.

So designing a site that sells is the ultimate goal. And I believe the Google Website Optimizer is the ultimate tool to achieve that goal.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this tool.