A/B testing, which entails running multiple versions of a site at once and tracking which one performs best with users, is a key part of launching a new version of any website.Visual Website Optimizer, which I’ll just call VWO from here on out, helps users manage this often complex process. The service shares some similiarities with a Y Combinator-funded startup called Optimizely, which launched in July.
Among some of VWO’s features are multivariate testing (you can adjust more than one item on your site and VWO will run them in various combinations to determine which ones have a positive effect), heatmaps showing off where users are clicking (which are useful for visualizing where your visitors are clicking for different variations of a site), and split URL tests, which gives you the option to redirect
traffic to two alternate versions of your website.
The site also has WordPress, Drupal and Google Analytics plugins, and allows testing of pages which are behind login/signup wall and enables segmentation and running targeted tests (say, for example,
you want to test only new visitors who came to your site searching for ‘Techcrunch’.
Customers can use VWO’s API to integrate the data and management into their own dashboards. And VWO will track conversions across different domains via third party cookies, send email notifications of test results, and will send automatic screenshot generations of variations for archiving and reporting,
The bootstrapped startup is also seeing significant growth in traffic handles by its severs; its servers are now handing 540 million pageviews per month, a 500 percent increase in month-to-month traffic.
And VWO’s platform is being used by a number of well known companies including Microsoft, RackSpace and Vendio.