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[Editor's note: most of our client testimonials sit behind a data capture form but we thought we would open this one up to everyone]

Glasses Direct, the world's largest online prescription eyewear store engages Maxymiser to proactively manage conversion rate onsite through multivariate testing to discover winning content to improve performance. Making informed decisions on the most effective content and offers is an essential part of removing the risk and subjectivity from website management.

David Carruthers of Glasses Direct offers some background on his reasons for selecting Maxymiser and the impact we have had on the business.

“Glasses Direct is a high-growth business and we have achieved our growth through an aggressive pace of innovation. As our business matures, it is vital that this innovation is not stymied by the risk of making changes without proper measurement of their impact on performance.

Glasses Direct first used a/b/c…[n] and multivariate testing in 2008. The headline results we achieved were fine but the integration of tags had to be repeated on a per-test basis, meaning our roadmap was frequently held up by IT bottlenecks and pre-planned release cycles. We didn’t feel we had full freedom to test everything, everywhere due to the technical resource overhead we were faced with.

In late 2009 we decided to investigate whether other suppliers could better address our need. Having done a full market assessment, and used another paid-for multivariate testing provider in the past, we concluded based on a full and rigorous assessment of the technical capabilities of all multivariate testing providers that Maxymiser was our best and only option.

We moved to Maxymiser and their One Touch universal tag has taken the pain out of deploying multivariate testing and allows us to get more out of the engagement by reducing the amount of per-test technical time to practically zero. The Maxymiser team set up tests according to our requirements and hands back to us for approval using the floating On Page Console, allowing us to quickly preview all variants before publishing the test to live.

With Maxymiser, technical bottlenecks have been removed and testing moves at the speed we need, enabling us to make evidence-based objective decisions faster.

The results we have achieved with Maxymiser have exceeded our expectations. Testing is used as a basis for Glasses Direct to reach objective decisions based on customer response on almost all the changes we make online. As an example, there was considerable internal debate around the best call to action to use on a particular button. Testing a number of ideas led us to adopt a winner that now delivers 30% more clickthroughs to the basket.

Security logos in our checkout have also undergone testing, allowing us to be sure that the addition of a new certification earlier this year would deliver more reassurance to our customers. More fundamental aspects of the site have also benefitted from the Maxymiser testing. We discovered that separating men’s and women’s glasses offers right from the homepage leads to a 50% increase in clickthroughs, representing significantly higher engagement.

At Glasses Direct we enjoy working with Maxymiser’s multivariate testing technology and team which enables us to push testing hard and get results at the pace we need. Our decision making process on critical aspects of web design and content is no longer constrained by subjectivity or technical bottlenecks, meaning that we can innovate fast, improve our performance and stay ahead of the competition.”

David Carruthers, Glasses Direct, June 2010