How can I A/B test my salon's website to increase real world traffic? | Hacker News Reader

How can I A/B test my salon's website to increase real world traffic?

6 pointsbdickason10 comments

My wife and I own a salon in NYC and we just relaunched our websites. We also, coincidentally, won a year of free service from Visual Website Optimizer (paraschopra's Wingify).

I'm a product manager by day at a local start and we A/B test everything but I can't seem to figure out a good way to test our site against real world traffic!

For example, if we were to change the headline on our site, we could verify using their analytics that more people were visiting the site, or clicking through to a sub-page, but most people just see our phone number and call!

Are there any examples or ideas of successful A/B tests for small brick and mortar businesses?

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Are you just looking for a way to measure? A couple ideas:

Printable coupons redeemable only in-store

Promo code that people say at the register

Reply cards that ask how did you hear about us

We measure based on source right now with a simple 'how did you hear about us' but I'm wondering if there's a better way to get people who call in to identify which version of the website they saw.

I don't really want to go the 'Mention coupon code AXJM3 when you call to get 10% off' route because it requires us to modify our salon software to match up with the A/B testing software :(

simple ways : 1. use different phone numbers , and measure calls.

2. show the phone number/numbers only on a specific page , and measure conversions to that page. this is a reasonable approximation for calls,

more complex: google "call tracking" , many providers offer tools.

I've been thinking about this for a ridiculous amount of time and didn't think to show two different phone numbers. Brilliant!!

Will look into call tracking, thanks!

Here is a link to a pitch from NYC startup at TC Disrupt last year: http://www.livestream.com/disrupt/video?clipId=pla_b6fa3cc6-...

The company is called Yext, and from what I remember at that time, there was concern about Yext placing phone numbers that they control across the web for the local businesses that they service; the implication being that there is some lock-in, and possibly some web juice being lost.

EDIT: I decided to actually check out the site and they assign only one number, so no a/b testing. I searched, but found no pricing, so it looks like they are discriminating based on the specific type of business.

It was interesting they made note that people tend to call local numbers more regularly than 800 or out of state, so I guess that is a feature to look for.

Shameless self-promotion - CallRail (http://www.callrail.com) provides call tracking numbers that are perfect for these tests. Give it a try, and feel free to contact me directly if I can help (andy at callrail dot com).

We have numerous case studies online: http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/case-studies.php

I am sure some of them will be relevant to you.

Use different phone numbers / email accounts to track conversions. I'd be shocked if you had enough traffic to do meaningful AB testing, however.

yeah, our traffic is very low :( We're doing 1200 uniques per month right now so it will be a long road :D

did you tried foursquare specials, hotpot and all of the online to offline tools?

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