Questia

Optimost increases Questia email subscriptions by 112%.

Questia is the first online library that provides 24/7 access to the world's largest online collection of books and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences, plus magazine and newspaper articles. To complement the library, Questia offers a range of search, note-taking, and writing tools that help students locate the most relevant information on their topics quickly, quote and cite correctly, and create properly formatted footnotes and bibliographies automatically.

Questia believes in continuous improvement, and they recognized that the page designs their web team put together, no matter how good they looked, couldn't possibly be optimal. So they decided to bring in Optimost to help them find the best solution to increase the number of subscribers who signed up for their newsletter. The dedicated Optimost Client Team developed a test plan for the newsletter signup page, which included 8 variables and 50 different values (versions of variables) to be tested. The Optimost solution engine quickly identified and generated almost two million possible permutations of the page. In less than a month, Optimost conducted multivariable tests on the Questia email intercept page to identify a winning creative that increased email address subscriptions by 112.9%.

By making several simple changes to their website, Questia was able to achieve success by utilizing multivariable optimization with Optimost:

• Changing the main photo on the page
• Altering the wording on the submit button
• Adding “please” to the email field instructions
• Reducing the transparency on the background image

Based on the impact on this effort, Questia has expanded their optimization program to cover more revenue-driving applications throughout their site.