Ever wondered how Amazon came to dominate online retailing?

Amazon’s conversion rate is reported to be as high as 9.6%* whilst the rest of the UK’s retail websites have a paltry conversion rate of 4.79%**

How is it that Amazon has a conversion rate twice the UK average?

Jeff Bezos CEO at Amazon puts it this way:

“We are not great advertisers. So we start with customers, figure out what they want”

In other words Amazon are passionate about putting the customer at the heart of their web site and at the heart of their website design process. In practice this means Amazon are passionate about using multivariate testing to get their customers tell them what they find engaging and convincing and what inspires them to convert.

In this online video Ron Kohavi of Microsoft Research explains how Amazon and Microsoft are using multivariate testing to improve conversion rates.

* Source: Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts
http://www.internetretailer.com/internet/marketing-conference/02468-proflowers-leads-conversion-rates-january-says-megaview-report.html
** Source: Coremetrics Benchmark Industry Report, March 2009
http://www.coremetrics.co.uk/solutions/industry-report.php