

Killer idea: play the split testing game with your boss and colleagues - paraschopra
http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/split-testing-game/

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garyrichardson
I thought this article was going to be about acting differently with your boss
and colleagues to see which gets you the most money/respect/whatever you're
chasing.

Needless to say, I was very disappointed.

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paraschopra
That's a good idea too but unless you have a twin brother working at the same
office I don't see how it is going to be easy.

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moeffju
Does anyone have experience with Visual Website Optimizer and its influence on
loading time and user experience? With all these Javascript A/B testing
services, I'm worried about content flashes and long loading times. E.g. for
the JS redirect, the browser would first load the page, THEN execute a
redirect, then load another full page. Or the content might change after DOM
completion, delaying rendering, or after rendering, causing flashes.

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paraschopra
I have seen one of our large customers (can't name them) do this and it is
indeed very interesting. What they do is this: they name one variation of the
test each for all the team members in the design and analytics team and then
make them live in a split test (irrespective of whether they all agree to
specific changes/ideas or not). I observed that they consistently get great
results for their split tests.

EDIT: typos and clarity

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revorad
So, this is multivariate testing, not A/B testing, right?

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paraschopra
No, this is A/B testing. Why do you think it is A/B testing?

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revorad
Ok, maybe I don't understand the difference. Aren't you suggesting testing
many different versions of a page, rather than just two?

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paraschopra
Yes, in split testing you can test as many different versions as you like.
Multivariate testing is different. You can read about the difference in the
recent post I wrote: [http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-
blog/differe...](http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-
blog/difference-ab-testing-multivariate-testing/)

~~~
revorad
From your post:

 _In A/B testing you split traffic amongst two or more completely different
versions of a webpage (landing page, home page, etc.) The variations of your
original page can differ in any manner. You can either just change the
headline; or you can even change entire design, layout, offer and what not in
the variations._

 _In multivariate test, you identify a few key areas/sections of a page and
then create variations for those sections specifically (as opposed to creating
variations of whole page in an A/B split test)._

I thought multivariate testing was testing lots of different variables (as the
name suggests) at once, while A/B testing is just testing two variations of
one variable at a time.

 _Edited after eru's comment below: Multivariate testing is an extreme form of
A/B testing._

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eru
I guess you should go with the general definition of multivariate testing
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multivariate_testing>) as it is used in
statistics.

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revorad
Yes, I got it mixed up.

 _In internet marketing, multivariate testing is a process by which more than
one component of a website may be tested in a live environment. It can be
thought of in simple terms as numerous A/B tests performed on one page at the
same time. A/B tests are usually performed to determine the better of two
content variations, multivariate testing can theoretically test the
effectiveness of limitless combinations._

