Time-Life is one of the world's leading developers and distributors of unique books, music, videos/DVDs, and multimedia products. Among the wide variety of music categories on its website (www.timelife.com) is a segment called "70s Music Explosion." A recent analysis of the product page for this segment revealed that few visitors were making purchases or adding products from this page to their shopping carts. In addition, the large amount of information on the page, coupled with its complex DHTML scripting, made it difficult to analyze, test, or even modify.

Time-Life turned to Optimost to help them optimize and improve the performance of the 70s product page. The dedicated Optimost project team worked with Time-Life to develop a test plan which included 10 variables and 63 different values (versions of the variables). Based on this test plan, the Optimost solution engine quickly identified and generated over 1 billion possible permutations of the page.

Using its advanced methodology, Optimost was able to conduct multivariable tests on a subset of these possible permutations of the test page. The winning creative resulted in a UAR (Unique Action Rate) increase of 75% for customers adding items to their shopping cart. As a result of the test, Time-Life is now on pace to have a seven-figure increase in annual online sales.

Along with this dramatic improvement in sales, multivariable testing enabled the company to understand how each variable impacted the behavior of their web visitors.

Some of the key learnings from the test:

• Removing different items from the order area improved conversions
• Adding a Money Back Guarantee to the order area increased conversions
• Changing the order of CDs impacted results
• Animated buttons improved response

Some of the 10 Test Plan Variables included:

• Main Banner
• Side Bar
• Introductory Test
• Order Area
• Order Button
• Order of CDs

About Time-Life

Founded in 1961 as the book division of Time Inc., Time-Life took its name from Time Inc.'s cornerstone magazines, Time and Life, but remained independent of both. By 1966, Time-Life combined its book offerings with music collections (two to five records) and packaged them as a sturdy box set.

Today, Time-Life is one of the world's pre-eminent creators and direct marketers of unique books, music, videos/DVDs, and multimedia products. The Time-Life name is one of the most recognized and trusted brands in existence today. Its products are sold throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia through television, print, retail, the Internet, telemarketing, and direct sales.