Website revenue increased by 5% with split testing
Interesting blog over on Get Elastic in their series of conversion optimisation for the Official Vancouver Olympics store.
They ran a simple split test with 2 versions with over 2000 transactions in a 3 week period. Although they did not get a significant design winner, they did choose the above design as it achieved the following:
- Variation A converted (GWO) 3.14% better than control variation
- Visits with Variation A resulted in 12.54% less Bounce Rate
- Overall site Conversion Rate was increased by 0.59%
- Average Order Value was increased by 5.16%
They also calculated that revenue would increase by 5.78%. One of the great things about web analytics is that it can help remove the guesswork involved in website evolution & can automate testing which makes a real revenue improvement for ecommerce websites.

Great post Barry. A/B differential/split testing is the only way to go. Web designers have spent years making their clients happy – people who most of the time have no idea about web design in the first place. You can't please everyone but you should at least put some science in place and let your customers decide, not trying to please yourself.