#Drupal modules for testing site optimisation
We work with lots of startup clients, helping them build their online businesses. On these projects, Drupal has of course been our tool of choice it has 2 important advantages over building a web application from scratch:
- Rapid site development
- Ease of functional changes
The first advantage is clearly beneficial to any project, startup or not. On the second, while the advantage of being able to change things, before, during and after launch, is clear, the difficulty lies more on the management or business side of things, i.e. with so many possibilities for improvement, what the hell do we change first and how do we know which change will have the most impact?
Marketing people, and more recently, startup advisors (people like Ries, Blank and McClure) talk about methods like "A/B Testing" and "Multivariate Testing". What they allow you to do is essentially this:
- Create 2 or more variations for you to test
- Randomly present them to your users
- See which one is most effective
"Effective" here can mean anything that's relevant to your business, like filling in a form, purchasing something, downloading an app, etc... i.e. some sort of conversion.
There are Drupal modules to help you do this, of course. Here are some we found, that look good:
- Webform A/B Testing - for determining which form converts better
- Multivariate - for multivariate testing on any URL of your site
- Google Website Optimizer - for integrating with Google's own multivariate testing service
We'll be loking for opportunities for using these modules to automate testing for our clients, helping make site optimisation decisions more data-driven and effective.
