CROMonitor: Monitor Your Competitors A/B Split and Multivariate Testing
Conversion Optimisation

CROMonitor: Monitor Your Competitors A/B Split and Multivariate Testing

22nd January 2014

A critical issue with the Internet is that businesses and individuals can make changes instantly. This 24 hour nature means that it’s incredibly difficult to monitor all of the many moving parts of your competitors sites. From simple copy changes, on-site optimisation projects, or broadening of product ranges, there can be a comprehensive array of changes going on at any one time.  Some of these changes could be game-changing and threaten your business.

Conversion optimisation came on leaps and bounds in 2013. Not only did many industry leaders begin discussing CRO tactics more, but many digital marketing agencies began offering these services too. Many businesses in the mainstream have quickly learned that investment in some digital marketing channels are hard to measure ROI on. Social media and content creation are good examples of this, proving difficulties understanding ROI without a comprehensive and informed measurement process.

Understandably, this can frustrate business-owners trying to make their marketing budgets go as far as possible. Conversion rate optimisation on the other hand is all about increasing ROI. Tactics such as A/B split and multivariate testing aimed at increasing conversions is a scientific and accurate way of increasing your ROI from your online assets.

How Do You Know if your Competitor is Running Optimisation Tests?

Herein lies the problem, inevitably raising the question how do you know if your competitors are running conversion optimisation tests? That is, beyond tracking down your competitors developer and bribing him or bugging their offices. Understanding whether your competitors are running A/B or multivariate split tests can benefit you in a number of ways, chiefly allowing you to see what aspects on their site they are testing, perhaps to inspire areas that you could test yourself? Knowing this, wouldn’t it be great if there was a tool to help you monitor this? Enter CROMonitor, a new product developed by Yousaf Sekander (Director at RocketMill and creator of Social Crawlytics, a great tool that we previously featured in StateofDigital).

CRO Monitor

What CROMonitor Does

CROMonitor allows you to track your competitors (or sites that inspire you) and send you reports when changes have been made. It does this by taking screenshots from a variety of IP address at scheduled intervals, it then compares these to each other and notifies you when changes have been made. By default CROMonitor allows:

  • Up to 3 different ‘watchlists’
  • 2 URLs on each
  • Up to 200MB of storage

How to Set Up A/B Split Testing & Multi-Variate Testing with CROMonitor

CROMonitor is very easy to use, simply go to the site, sign up and you’re off! You can then create a ‘watchlist’, in which you can add unique URLs that you want to monitor for changes: CROMonitor Watchlist Using CROMonitor to Monitor URLs One nice feature is that you can change the percentage change threshold of site changes, allowing you to restrict the noise of very minor site changes. CROMonitor Site Change Threshold (Percentage)   CROMonitor will then email you on the intervals that you’ve requested it check for changes, reporting the percentage of change that can be seen in the page you’ve set up to track: CROMonitor Email Update CROMonitor is fully responsive, designed so that CROMonitor works on whatever device you use to access it, desktop, tablet or mobile. Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like when loaded on my mobile screen: CRO Monitor Mobile

Test Examples

At the time of writing this article I contacted CROMonitor creator Yousaf Sekander and he kindly provided me some examples of tests that he has run using the tools, you can see these below: CROMonitor Test Example Kissmetrics CROMonitor Test Example ConversionXL

Summary

  • Have you discovered software like CROMonitor out there?
  • Are there any tools that you believe would compliment using CROMonitor?
  • What uses could you find for CROMonitor for?

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Written By
Ned Poulter is CEO & Founder of Pole Star Digital, a Digital Marketing Consultancy he runs alongside a number of entrepreneurial ventures. He spends his time developing and overseeing digital strategy for a number of well reputed international clients, developing creative approaches to achieving organic search results, increasing inbound traffic,...
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