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• How to Measure Marketing Effectiveness : A Step-by-Step Guide

  22 février 2024, par Erin

  Are you struggling to prove that your marketing efforts are having a measurable impact on your company’s performance ? We get it. 

  You would think that digital marketing would make it easier to track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. But in many ways, it’s harder than ever. With so many channels and strategies competing against each other, it can feel impossible to pin down the campaign that caused a conversion. 

  That leaves you in a tricky spot as a marketing manager. It can be hard to know which campaigns to persevere with and harder still to prove your worth to stakeholders. 

  Thankfully, there are several strategies you can use to measure the success of your campaigns and put a value on your efforts. So, if you want to learn how you can measure the effectiveness of your marketing, improve the ROI of your efforts and prove your value as an employee, read on. 

  What is marketing effectiveness ?

  Marketing effectiveness measures how successful a marketing strategy or campaign is and the extent to which it achieves goals and business objectives.

  

  It’s a growing concern for brands, with research showing that 61.2% say measuring marketing effectiveness has become a more prominent factor in decision-making over the last three years. In other words, it’s becoming critical for marketers to know how to measure their effectiveness. 

  But it’s getting harder to do so. A combination of factors, including channel fragmentation, increasingly convoluted customer journeys, and the deprecation of third-party cookies, makes it hard for marketing teams to measure marketing performance. 

  Why you need to measure marketing effectiveness

  Imagine ploughing thousands of dollars into a campaign and not being confident that your efforts bore fruit. It’s unthinkable, right ? If you care about optimising campaigns and improving your worth as a marketer, measuring marketing effectiveness is necessary. 

  

  Optimise marketing campaigns

  Do you know how effectively each campaign generates conversions and drives revenue ? No ? Then, you need to measure marketing effectiveness.

  Doing so could also shine a light on ways to improve your campaigns. One paid ad campaign may suffer from a poor return on ad spend caused by high CPCs. Targeting less competitive keywords could dramatically reduce your costs. 

  Improve ROI

  Today, marketing budgets make up almost 10% of a company’s total revenue, up from 6.4% in 2021. With so much revenue at stake, you’ve got to deliver a return on that investment. 

  Measuring marketing effectiveness can help you identify the campaigns or strategies delivering the highest ROI so you can invest more heavily into them. On the other side of the same coin, you can use the data to strike off any campaigns that aren’t pulling their weight — increasing your ROI even further. 

  Demonstrate value

  Let’s get selfish for a second. Whether you’re an in-house marketing manager or work for an agency, the security of your paycheck depends on your ability to deliver high-ROI campaigns. 

  Measuring your marketing effectiveness lets you showcase your value to your company and clients. It helps you build stronger relationships that can lead to bigger and better opportunities in the future. 

  We should take this opportunity to point out that a good tool for measuring marketing effectiveness is equally important. You probably think Google Analytics will do the job, right ? But when you start implementing the strategies we discuss below, there’s a good chance you’ll have data quality issues. 

  That was the case for full-service marketing agency MHP/Team SI, which found Google Analytics’ data sampling severely limited the quantity and quality of insights they could collect. It was only by switching to Matomo, a platform that doesn’t use data sampling, that the agency could deliver the insights its clients needed to grow. 

  Further reading :

  • How to check website traffic as accurately as possible
  • 8 best tools to analyse website traffic

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

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  How to measure marketing effectiveness

  Measuring marketing effectiveness is not always easy, especially if you have long buying cycles and a lack of good-quality data. Make things as easy as possible by following the steps below :

  Know what success looks like

  You can’t tell whether your campaigns are effective if you don’t know what you are trying to achieve. That’s why the first step in measuring marketing effectiveness is to set a clear goal. 

  So, ask yourself what success looks like for each campaign you launch. 

  Remember, a campaign doesn’t have to drive leads to be considered effective. If all you wanted to do was raise brand awareness or increase organic traffic, you could achieve both goals without recording a single conversion. 

  We’d wager that’s probably not true for most marketing managers. It’s much more likely you want to achieve something like the following :

  • Generating 100 new customers
  • Increasing revenue by 20%
  • Selling $5,000 of your new product line
  • Reducing customer churn by 50%
  • Achieving a return on ad spend of 150%

  Conventional goal-setting wisdom applies here. So, ensure your goals are measurable, timely, relevant and achievable. 

  Track conversions

  Setting up conversion tracking in your web analytics platform is vital to measuring marketing effectiveness accurately. 

  What you count as a conversion event will depend on the goals you’ve set above. It doesn’t have to be a sale, mind you. Downloading an ebook or signing up for a webinar are worthy conversion goals, especially if you know they increase the chances of a customer converting. 

  

  Whichever platform you choose, ensure it can meet your current and future needs. This is one of the reasons open-source content management system Concrete CMS opted for Matomo when choosing a new website analytics platform. The flexibility of the Matomo platform gave Concrete CMS the adaptability it needed for future growth. 

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  Decide on an attribution model

  Marketing attribution is a way of measuring the impact of different channels and touchpoints across the customer journey. If you can assign a value to each conversion, you can use a marketing attribution model to quantify the value of your channels and campaigns.

  While most web analytics platforms simply credit the last touchpoint, marketing attribution offers a more comprehensive view by considering all interactions along the customer journey. This distinction is important because relying solely on the last touchpoint can lead to skewed insights and misallocation of resources and budget. 

  By adopting a marketing attribution approach, you can make more informed decisions, optimizing your campaigns and maximizing your return on investment.

  

  There are several different attribution models you can use to give credit to your various campaigns. These include :

  • First interaction : Gives all the credit to the first channel in the customer journey.
  • Last interaction : Gives all the credit to the last channel in the customer journey.
  • Last non-direct attribution : Gives all credit to the final touchpoint in the customer journey, except for direct interactions. In those cases, credit is given to the touchpoint just before the direct one.
  • Linear attribution : Distributes credit equally across all touchpoints.
  • Position-based attribution : Attributes 40% credit to the first and last touchpoints and distributes the remaining 20% evenly across all other touchpoints. 

  Consider carefully which attribution model to use, as this can significantly impact your marketing effectiveness calculation by giving certain campaigns too much credit.

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

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  Analyse KPIs

  Tracking KPIs is essential if you want to quantify the impact of your marketing campaigns. But which metrics should you track ?

  To improve brand awareness or traffic, so-called vanity metrics like sessions, returning visitors, and organic traffic may suffice as KPIs. 

  However, that’s not going to be the case for most marketers, whose performance is tied to revenue and ROI. If that’s you, put vanity metrics to one side and focus on the following conversion metrics instead :

  • Conversion rate : the percentage of users who complete a desired action. 
  • Return on ad spend : the revenue earned for every dollar spent on a campaign.
  • Return on investment : a broader calculation than ROAS, typically calculated across all your marketing efforts. 
  • Customer lifetime value : the total amount a customer will spend throughout their relationship with your company.
  • Customer acquisition cost : the cost to acquire each customer on average.

  

  Your analytics platform and advertising tools should track most of these KPIs by default. Matomo, for instance, automatically calculates your conversion rate in the Goals report. 

  How to present your marketing effectiveness

  Calculating your marketing effectiveness is one thing, but it’s important to share this information with stakeholders — whether those are executives in your company or your agency’s clients. 

  Follow the steps below to create an insightful and compelling marketing report :

  • Set the scene. There’s no guarantee that the people reading your report will know your goals. So, add context at the start of the reporting by spelling out what you are trying to achieve and why. 
  • Select the right data. You don’t want to overwhelm the reader with facts and figures, but you do need to provide hard evidence of your success. Include the KPIs you used to measure your success and show how these have changed over time. You can also support your report with audience insights such as heatmaps or customer surveys.
  • Tell a story with your presentation. Give your presentation a narrative arc with a beginning, middle, and end. Start with what you want to achieve, describe how you plan to achieve it and end with the results. Support your story with graphs and other visual aids that hold your reader’s attention. 
  • Provide a concise summary. Not everyone will read your presentation cover to cover. With that in mind, provide a summary of your report at the start or end that shows what you achieved and quantifies your marketing effectiveness. 

  How to improve marketing effectiveness

  Don’t settle for simply measuring your marketing effectiveness. Use the following strategies to make future campaigns as effective as possible. 

  Understand customer behaviour

  More effective marketing campaigns start by deeply understanding your customers, who they are, and how they behave. This allows you to take an audience-first approach to your marketing efforts and design campaigns around the unique needs of your customers. 

  Gather as much first-party data as you can. Surveys, focus groups, and other market research techniques can help you learn more about who your customers are, but don’t disregard the quantitative data you can gather from your web analytics platform. 

  Using Heatmaps, Session Recordings and behavioural analytics tools, you can learn exactly how customers behave when they land on your site, where they focus their attention and which pages they look at first. 

  

  These insights can help you turn an average campaign into an exceptional one. For example, a heatmap may highlight the need to move CTA buttons above the fold to increase conversions. A session recording could pinpoint the problems users have when filling out your website’s forms. 

  Further reading :

  • What Is Behavioural Analytics & How Can It Improve Website Performance
  • 9 Form Optimisation Tips to Convert More Visitors
  • How to Increase Conversions with Form Analysis

  Optimise landing pages

  Developing a culture of testing and experimentation is a great way to improve your marketing effectiveness. Let’s dive into A/B testing.

  By tweaking various elements of your landing pages, you can squeeze every last conversion from your campaigns.

  

  We have a guide on conversion funnel optimisation, which we recommend you check out, but I’ll briefly list some of the optimisations you could test :

  • Making your CTAs actionable and compelling
  • Integrating images and videos
  • Adding testimonials and other forms of social proof
  • Reducing form fields

  Use a different attribution model

  It might be that some campaigns, strategies or traffic sources aren’t getting the love they deserve. By changing your attribution model, you can significantly change the perceived effectiveness of certain campaigns. 

  Let’s say you use a last-touch attribution model, for instance. Only the last channel customers will get credit for each conversion, meaning top-of-the-funnel campaigns like SEO may be deemed less effective than they are. 

  It’s why you must continually test, tweak and validate your chosen model — and why changing it can be so powerful. 

  Measure your marketing effectiveness with Matomo

  Measuring your marketing effectiveness is hard work. But it’s vital to optimise campaigns, improve your ROI and demonstrate your value. 

  The good news is that Matomo makes things a lot easier thanks to its comprehensive conversion tracking, attribution modelling capabilities and behavioural insight features like Heatmaps, A/B Testing and Session Recordings. 

  Take steps today to start measuring (and improving) the effectiveness of your marketing with our 21-day free trial. No credit card required.

  Try Matomo for Free

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• The Only 7 Lead Generation Tools You Need in 2024

  7 mars 2024, par Erin

  If you can’t get leads, you can’t get customers. To ensure you always have a steady stream of new customers (and revenue), you need to equip yourself with lead generation tools.

  Lead gen software does the heavy lifting for you so you can focus on providing great products and great services. With it, you’ll be able to turn more strangers into customers and grow your business.

  And you don’t need a ton of tools to get the job done, either. Consolidating your tech stack to a few select tools will help you get more done in less time (and with less confusion).

  In this article, we’ll analyse the top seven lead generation tools to help you grow your business in 2024.

  Let’s dive in.

  What is a lead generation tool ?

  A lead generation tool is software you can use to turn strangers into customers. It helps you draw customers into your sales funnel by learning their contact details, like their email address or phone number.

  

  Lead generation tools are great levers you can pull to drive high-quality leads. They remove the grunt work by automating the lead generation process. 

  Whether it’s through creating lead magnets, offering conversion rate analytics, helping you create high-quality forms or automating the lead follow-up process, lead generation tools can bring in new customers to grow your business.

  The top 7 lead generation tools in 2024

  To land more leads, you need to ensure you’re leveraging the right software. With so many to choose from, here’s just a handful of the best ones available :

  

  1. Matomo : Best conversion optimisation tool

  Matomo is an open-source website analytics tool dedicated to protecting user privacy and data. Trusted on over 1 million websites, the platform offers in-depth insights into your web traffic, including conversion data.

  

  Why Matomo ? Matomo is trusted by over 1 million websites, including the United Nations and the European Commission, making it the leading choice for privacy-focused web analytics.

  It comes equipped with a suite of conversion optimisation features to help you generate more leads. You can easily analyse your target audience’s behaviour while also respecting users’ privacy.

  Standout features : In-depth visitor tracking, From Analytics, Session Recordings, A/B Testing, Heatmaps Marketing Attribution, roll-up reporting (pulling data from multiple sites), Google Analytics importing. and more.

  Integrations : Cloudflare, WooCommerce, Squarespace, Shopify, Drupal, Magento, Vue, SharePoint, WordPress, Wix, Webflow, GoDaddy, Jimdo, Joomla, Kajabi. and more.

  Pricing : Starts free for Matomo On-Premise and increases to $23/month for Matomo Cloud (which includes a free 21-day trial with no credit card required).

  Pros

  • 100% accurate data with no data sampling
  • Leading web analytics tool for respecting visitor privacy
  • Compliant with the strictest privacy laws, like the GDPR
  • No need for cookie consent banner (except in the UK and Germany)
  • Wide range of advanced features to optimise your website and increase conversions
  • Cloud hosting and on-premise options for flexibility

  Cons

  • Matomo On-Premise requires technical expertise (but for the less technical, the Cloud option works instantly)
  • On-Premise plugins are an additional cost

  Try Matomo for Free

  Get the web insights you need, without compromising data accuracy.

  Start for free

  No credit card required

  2. HubSpot : Best all-in-one CRM for organising leads

  HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing software with over 194,000 customers worldwide. This user-friendly platform is dedicated to helping businesses of all sizes manage leads and customers.

  

  Why HubSpot ? HubSpot Marketing integrates seamlessly with the HubSpot CRM to help with everything from lead capture to conversion. The platform also features a free version — a great starting place for lead generation and management.

  Standout features : A robust set of no-code lead gen tools, like ads, forms, customisable landing pages, lead capture templates for potential customers, email campaigns, analytics dashboards and a free CRM to track leads.

  Integrations : Google Ads, WordPress, Jotform, Facebook Ads, Magento, Shopify, Weebly, WordPress, Zapier and Drupal.

  Pricing : Starts free for anyone and increases to $800/month for a professional plan.

  Pros

  • User-friendly interface
  • All-in-one lead management solution
  • Easy integration with HubSpot CRM
  • Simple analytics for beginners
  • Includes landing page tools
  • Offers email marketing tools to nurture leads

  Cons

  • Free version has limited functionality
  • Expensive jump to paid plans

  3. Leadfeeder : Best for finding warm B2B leads

  Leadfeeder is a business-to-business (B2B) marketing tool that shows B2B brands which companies are visiting their websites and gives them contact information to reach out to the right decision-makers.

  

  Why Leadfeeder ? Leadfeeder simplifies outreach for B2B organisations because it shows you what businesses are interacting with your website. Rather than trying to reach out to completely cold leads, the tool highlights brands that are already checking out your content and offerings.

  Standout features : Many account-based marketing (ABM) tools enable you to discover B2B accounts with insights into when you should contact them after they visit your site, as well as their job titles. The platform also includes a range of features that notify you and your sales team when qualified B2B leads come to your site so that you can move to capture them quickly.

  Integrations : Zoho, Google Chat, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Google Looker Studio, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Microsoft Dynamics and Slack.

  Pricing : Starts at $139/month (includes a 14-day free trial).

  Pros

  • Easily find prospective customers
  • Track website visitors and potential customers freely
  • Simple filtering capabilities

  Cons

  • Few integrations available
  • Can be difficult to contact customer support

  4. OptinMonster : Best all-in-one lead generation form tool

  Founded in 2013, OptinMonster has over 1.2 million users worldwide. It offers a wide range of lead gen tools led by robust form tools that turn your target audience into leads.

  

  Why OptinMonster ? The platform is one of the most reputable lead generation platforms available. With nearly 100 lead capture templates, it’s highly customisable to almost any business looking to begin capturing leads with different forms.

  Standout features : 95 customisable form templates, drag-and-drop builders, onsite retargeting, segmentation, A/B testing and exit-intent popups that present forms when a user is about to leave the site.

  Integrations : Constant Contact, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, Salesforce Pardot, Campaign Monitor, HubSpot, Jilt, Keap and Mailchimp.

  Pricing : Starts at $16/month (no free trial offered).

  Pros

  • Easy drag-and-drop form-builder
  • Wide range of form templates
  • Customisable forms for any business
  • Simple A/B testing to help optimise form performance

  Cons

  • No free trial available
  • Growth features, like onsite retargeting, are only available on higher-tiered plans

  5. Intercom : Best live chat tool for capturing leads

  Intercom is one of the top live chat tools for helping businesses maintain solid communication with their customers. Founded in 2011, this live chat platform serves over 25,000 users around the world with a simple, sophisticated experience and seamless lead generation features.

  

  Why Intercom ? Intercom is a live chat tool first. But many people don’t know it’s also a simple lead capture tool. When people think of lead generation, they think of static or popup forms. But Intercom allows you to capture forms directly within a live chat conversation.

  Standout features : Lead generation via live chat that allows you to naturally capture potential customers’ information to turn them into a lead. The tool also comes equipped with chatbots that can automate the communication and lead gen process on autopilot.

  Integrations : Pipedrive, Typeform, Google Analytics, Zapier, Calendly, Salesforce, Stripe, Campaign Monitor, Clearbit Reveal and HubSpot.

  Pricing : Starts at $39/month (with a 21-day free trial).

  Pros

  • Live chat lead gen capture
  • Chatbot lead generation automation
  • Wide range of integrations and apps
  • User-friendly interface

  Cons

  • Fairly expensive for small businesses
  • Customer support isn’t the fastest

  6. Callingly : Best for making inbound calls with leads

  Callingly is a sophisticated call software that lets you get the most out of every inbound call you get from leads. Founded in 2019, this software company gives valuable insights into your inbound call leads, pulling information from various integrations and forms.

  

  Why Callingly ? Callingly is a robust call software that gathers lead information through forms, lead magnets, landing pages and forms. The software also has intelligent routing, which sends a call to the most relevant salesperson.

  Standout features : Advanced lead routing ensures inbound leads are directed to the most appropriate sales rep based on their unique needs and geographic location. The tool is also equipped with call tracking, analytics, lead source tracking and more to help personalise the experience for quick capture and conversion of leads.

  Integrations : ClickFunnels, Pipedrive, Salesforce, Drip, Aircall, HubSpot, Jotform, OptinMonster, Unbounce and Zapier.

  Pricing : Starts at $49/month (with a 14-day free trial).

  Pros

  • Instantly see robust caller information based on previous interactions
  • Intelligent routing places leads with the right sales reps
  • Call recordings to capture data and transfer it into your CRM
  • Voicemail and caller ID capabilities
  • Reporting and analytics for performance tracking

  Cons

  • Doesn’t include lead segmentation
  • Limited customisations
  • No email integration

  7. Notion : Best for creating informational lead magnets

  Notion is one of the most popular collaboration tools on the Internet. Founded in 2013, the platform has over 35 million users worldwide. While it’s known primarily for its advanced note-taking capabilities, Notion is also a simple tool you can use to create informational lead magnets.

  

  Why Notion ? Notion is a simple yet powerful tool you can use to create almost anything. If you want to generate more leads, then creating a free info product with Notion is a simple and effective way to do that. It enables you to create ebooks, digital courses and video courses without having to rely on expensive software.

  Standout features : Documentation tools, note-taking, collaborative documents and duplication capabilities. It’s simple to create a high-value informational product, like an ebook or course with multiple chapters.

  Integrations : Audienceful, Miro, Momentum, Slack, ChatGPT, Clockify, Desktop.com, SureTriggers, Trello and Google Drive.

  Pricing : Starts at $8/month (no free trial available).

  Pros

  • Easy to create a digital product or lead magnet
  • Leads have access with a simple link
  • Lead magnet can be updated in real time
  • AI writing assistant
  • Drag-and-drop functionality
  • User-friendly interface
  • Low-cost pricing plans

  Cons

  • No free trial available (though there is a free version)
  • Search function could use some improvement
  • Performance isn’t the fastest

  Use Matomo to generate more leads

  If you want more leads, then you need to start tracking your website’s forms.

  With Matomo, you get access to features like Form Analytics, A/B Testing, Heatmaps, and Session Recordings to help with conversion rate optimisation.

  Recently, Concrete CMS leveraged Matomo’s funnel analysis feature to improve its lead capture. The CMS was then able to identify bottlenecks in user onboarding. Matomo’s insights showed that users were getting stuck at the address input stage of the form.

  By tweaking their form, Concrete CMS tripled their leads in just a few days.

  If you want to improve your lead generation, then get started with Matomo’s 21-day free trial today. No credit card required.

  Try Matomo for Free

  21 day free trial. No credit card required.

  
  

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• Multivariate Testing vs A/B Testing (Quick-Start Guide)

  7 mars 2024, par Erin

  Traditional advertising (think Mad Men) was all about slogans, taglines and coming up with a one-liner that was meant to change the world.

  But that type of advertising was extremely challenging to test, so it was hard to know if it worked. Most of the time, nobody knew if they were being effective with their advertising.

  Enter modern marketing : the world of data-driven advertising.

  Thanks to the internet and web analytics tools like Matomo, you can quickly test almost anything and improve your site.

  The question is, should you do multivariate testing or A/B testing ?

  While both have their advantages, each has a specific use case.

  In this guide, we’ll break down the differences between multivariate and A/B testing, offer some pros and cons of each and show you some examples so you can decide which one is best for you.

  What is A/B testing ?

  A/B testing, or split testing, is testing an individual element in a medium against another version of the same element to see which produces better results.

  

  A/B tests are conducted by creating two different versions of a digital landmark : a website, landing page, email, or advertisement.

  The goal ? Figure out which version performs better.

  Let’s say, for example, you want to drive more sales on your core product page.

  You test two call-to-action buttons : “Buy Now” and “Add to Cart.”

  After running the test for two weeks, you see that “Buy Now” produced 1.2% conversions while “Add to Cart” produced 7.6%.

  In this scenario, you’ve found your winner : version B, “Add to Cart.”

  By conducting A/B tests regularly, you can optimise your site, increase engagement and convert more visitors into customers.

  Keep in mind that A/B testing isn’t perfect ; it doesn’t always produce a win.

  According to Noah Kagan, founder of AppSumo, only 1 out of 8 A/B tests his company conducts produces significant change.

  Advantages of A/B testing

  A/B testing is great when you need to get an accurate result fast on a specific element of your marketing efforts.

  Whether it’s a landing page or product page, you can get quick results without needing a lot of traffic.

  A/B testing is one of the most widely accepted and used testing methods for marketers and business owners.

  When you limit the number of tracked variables used in a test, you can quickly deliver reliable data, allowing you to iterate and pivot quickly if necessary.

  This is a great way to test your marketing methods, especially if you’re a newer business or you don’t have substantial traffic yet.

  Splitting up your traffic into a few segments (like with multivariate testing) will be very challenging to gain accurate results if you have lower daily traffic.

  One final advantage of A/B testing is that it’s a relatively easy way to introduce testing and optimising to a team, decision-maker, or stakeholder since it’s easy to implement. You can quickly demonstrate the value with a simple change and tangible evidence.

  Disadvantages of A/B testing

  So, what are the downsides to A/B testing ?

  Although A/B testing can get you quick results on small changes, it has limitations.

  A/B testing is all about measuring one element against another.

  This means you’re immediately limited in how many elements you can test. If you have to test out different variables, then A/B testing isn’t your best option since you’ll have to run test after test to get your result.

  If you need specific information on how different combinations of elements interact with one another on a web page, then multivariate is your best option.

  What is multivariate testing ?

  If you want to take your testing to the next level, you’ll want to try multivariate testing.

  Multivariate testing relies on the same foundational mechanism of A/B testing, but instead of matching up two elements against one another, it compares a higher number of variables at once.

  Multiple + variations = multivariate.

  Multivariate testing looks at how combinations of elements and variables interact.

  Like A/B testing, traffic to a page is split between different web page versions. Multivariate testing aims to measure each version’s effectiveness against the other versions.

  Ultimately, it’s about finding the winning combination.

  

  When to use multivariate testing

  The quick answer on when to use multivariate testing is if you have enough traffic.

  Just how much traffic, though ?

  While there’s no set number, you should aim to have 10,000 visitors per month or more, to ensure that each variant receives enough traffic to produce meaningful results within a reasonable time frame.

  Once you meet the traffic requirement, let’s talk about use cases.

  Let’s say you want to introduce a new email signup.

  But you want to create it from scratch and aren’t sure what will make your audience take action.

  So, you create a page with a signup form, a header, and an image.

  To run a multivariate test, you create two lengths of signup forms, four headlines, and two images.

  Next, you would create a test to split traffic between these sixteen combinations.

  Advantages of multivariate testing

  If you have enough traffic, multivariate testing can be an incredible way to speed up your A/B testing by testing dozens of combinations of your web page.

  This is handy when creating a new landing page and you want to determine if specific parts of your design are winners — which you can then use in future campaigns.

  Disadvantages of multivariate testing

  The main disadvantage of multivariate testing is that you need a lot of traffic to get started.

  If you try to do a multivariate analysis but you’re not getting much traffic, your results won’t be accurate (and it will take a long time to see accurate data).

  Additionally, multivariate tests are more complicated. They’re best suited for advanced marketers since more moving parts are at play.

  Key differences between multivariate and A/B testing

  Now that we’ve covered what A/B and multivariate tests are, let’s look at some key differences to help clarify which is best for you.

  

  1. Variation of combinations

  The major difference between A/B and multivariate testing is the number of combinations involved.

  With A/B testing, you only look at one element (no combinations). You simply take one part of your page (i.e., your headline copy) and make two versions.

  With multivariate testing, you’re looking at combinations of different elements (i.e., headline copy, form length, images).

  2. Number of pages to test

  The next difference lies in how many pages you will test.

  With an A/B test, you are splitting traffic on your website to two different pages : A and B.

  However, with multivariate testing, you will likely have 4-16 different test pages.

  This is because dozens of combinations can be created when you start testing a handful of elements at once.

  For example, if you want to test two headlines, two form buttons and two images on a signup form, then you have several combinations :

  • Headline A, Button A, Image A
  • Headline A, Button A, Image B
  • Headline A, Button B, Image A
  • Headline A, Button B, Image B
  • Headline B, Button A, Image A
  • Headline B, Button A, Image B
  • Headline B, Button B, Image A
  • Headline B, Button B, Image B

  In this scenario, you must create eight pages to send traffic to.

  3. Traffic requirements

  The next major difference between the two testing types is the traffic requirements.

  With A/B testing, you don’t need much traffic at all.

  Since you’re only testing two pages, you can split your traffic in half between the two types.

  However, if you plan on implementing a multivariate test, you will likely be splitting your traffic at least four or more ways.

  This means you need to have significantly more traffic coming in to get accurate data from your test. If you try to do this when your traffic is too low, you won’t have a large enough sample size.

  4. Time requirements

  Next up, just like traffic, there’s also a time requirement.

  A/B testing only tests two versions of a page against each other (while testing a single element). This means you’ll get accurate results faster than a multivariate test — usually within days.

  However, for a multivariate test, you might need to wait weeks. This is because you’re splitting your traffic by 4, 8, 12, or more web page variations. This could take months since you need a large enough sample size for accuracy.

  5. Big vs. small changes

  Another difference between A/B testing and multivariate testing is the magnitude of changes.

  With an A/B test, you’re looking at one element of a page, which means changing that element to the winning version isn’t a major overhaul of your design.

  But, with multivariate testing, you may find that the winning combination is drastically different than your control page, which could lead to a significant design change.

  6. Accuracy of results

  A/B tests are easier to decipher than multivariate testing since you only look at two versions of a single element on a page.

  You have a clear winner if one headline yields a 5% conversion rate and another yields a 1.2% conversion rate.

  But multivariate testing looks at so many combinations of a page that it can be a bit trickier to decipher what’s moving the needle.

  Pros and cons : Multivariate vs. A/B testing

  Before picking your testing method of choice, let’s look at some quick pros and cons.

  

  A/B testing pros and cons

  Here are the pros and cons of A/B testing :

  Pros

  • Get results quickly
  • Results are easier to interpret
  • Lower traffic requirement
  • Easy to get started

  Cons

  • You need to be hyper-focused on the right testing element
  • Requires performing test after test to optimise a web page

  Multivariate testing pros and cons

  Here are the pros and cons of multivariate testing :

  Pros

  • Handy when redesigning an entire web page
  • You can test multiple variables at once
  • Significant results (since traffic is higher)
  • Gather multiple data insights at once

  Cons

  • Requires substantial traffic
  • Harder to accurately decipher results
  • Not as easy to get started (more advanced)

  Use Matomo to start testing and improving your site

  

  You need to optimise your website if you want to get more leads, land more conversions and grow your business.

  A/B testing and multivariate testing are proven testing methods you can lean on to improve your website and create a better user experience.

  You may prefer one testing method now over the other, and that’s okay.

  The main thing is you’re starting to test. The best marketers and analysts in the world find what works through testing and double down on their winning tactics.

  If you want to start improving your website with testing today, get started with Matomo for free.

  With Matomo, you can conduct A/B tests and multivariate tests easily, accurately, and ethically. Unlike other web analytics tools, Matomo prioritises privacy, providing
  100% accurate data without sampling, and eliminates the need for cookie consent
  banners (except in the UK and Germany).

  Try Matomo free for 21-days. No credit card required.

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