How Google increased AdWords signups by 20% using multivariate testing

I’m sure we are all familiar with Google and how successful a company they are. Part of that success is probably due to them continuing to test and improve their various websites and services.

One of the pages Google have tested heavily is their UK AdWords homepage. A brave step you might think, as a lot of Google’s revenue comes from this part of their business. But testing allows you to try out new ideas and compare them to your original – actually reducing risk by testing what works. Not increasing it. In order to increase Adwords signups, they Google used multivariate testing.

Multivariate testing is a powerful tool you can use to test several elements on a page at once, and find out what works best on your website. It’s a bit like cooking; you can try out lots of different combinations of ingredients to see which recipe works best.

Which ingredients did they test?

Google identified four main variables to test, and tested against four alternative options:

• Header
• Blurb
• Image
• Button

Page header

The original header contained what is known as a ‘we/we’, which is where the company talks about themselves rather than the user. Everyone likes to talk about themselves (‘hey we’re great’) but more often than not your users are more interested in their needs and their problems. So making your titles and heading about your customers and their problems or needs can have a big impact.

Call-to-action button

Using the words ‘start now’ in the call-to-action is nice and straight forward but for many users this might be too committal. ‘What exactly am I committing myself to starting here’ would be a thought running through my mind.

This might be off-putting for many visitors , probably making the user believe they couldn’t change their minds after clicking it.

So what was the winning combination?

The winning combination delivered a 20% increase in new active AdWords advertisers! For Google this would literally be millions of £’s.

The two main noticeable differences are the changes in the heading and the call-to-action button. The heading changed from a ‘we/we’ to a sentence all about the user – ‘Attract more customers’ really lets them know what’s in it for them.

The text on the call-to-action button changes the psychology of the click completely. The user is no longer worried about committing themselves to anything but instead understands they can ‘try’ Adwords now.

Always be testing

The results show that a little change can go a long way if it’s combined with effective multivariate testing. For Google just changing a few elements resulted in a huge increase in sales revenue. (we’re not sure of the number but you can take a guess!).

Shouldn’t your company be thinking about improving sales using multivariate testing?