Website Optimizer is a new powerful tool from Google that's free and will help you to increase the effectiveness of your website.

Web Optimizer is a free tool related to AdWords, and whilst we know AdWords can increase traffic to your site, this doesn’t necessarily mean conversions – enquiries, purchases, downloads or whatever your site is trying to achieve. The Website Optimizer tool has been designed to help to convert traffic into conversions by testing different pages layouts – in real time – in order to determine which one works best for you.

To reduce arguments over who thinks what creative idea will work best, or the cost if you end up getting it wrong, Web Optimizer allows you to see the real time proof of what web page layouts, creative/design elements and headlines/copy perform better. Don’t spend time guessing what works, let your users tell you.

The optimisation tool enables you to test different ideas for variations of headlines, promotional copy, or images and uses Google Analytics technology for tracking and reporting which variation had the highest conversions.

Web Optimiser allows for two different types of testing - A/B and multivariate. A/B allows you to test the performance of two entirely different pages, meaning you change the overall look and feel of a page. Multivariate testing allows you to test content variations in different sections of your page simultaneously. For example, you could try out different headlines, different images and different product descriptions.

These types of powerful multivariate optimisation tools were previously only available at a premium cost – like $100K or more – or when booking large amounts of online advertising media through specific agencies, but Google have taken this technology and made it available to everyone, regardless of company size or advertising budgets. Most importantly, you don't have to give Google access to your website – you just put in some special codes which call their massive computing power to handle the options when the user displays it.

There may still be some Google sceptics out there, wondering why these powerful tools that would normally be unattainable for most businesses are being made available for free. Google have a vested interest in helping your website work for you – the more effective AdWords is in gaining you customers, the more you will be willing to spend in their auction advertising system. It is a competitive market online for your advertising dollar so by making conversions as easy as possible through AdWords, Google are investing in their future. And Google don't even require you to spend money on Adwords to take advantage of this powerful new tool!

The Website Optimizer is integrated into Google AdWords, but it tests all traffic to your site including AdWords ads, Google search results and any other traffic sources.

You can start multivariate testing on your site now, or if you want professional help to design and implement testing for your website we can help.

Find out more

http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/

Quick start guide - http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=61149

How other people have used this tool effectively - http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/case_studies.html