The company worked with SiteSpect to use its multivariate testing and behavioral targeting technology. Vegas.com is hoping to boost conversions and page views and reduce bounce rates.

“Now, people on mobile devices might get a special version of the site,” said Eric Hansen, president of SiteSpect, Boston. “It’s created more specifically to be more effective and used on the mobile device.

“With Vegas.com, they looked at trends over the last couple of months and 7 percent of their traffic is coming from mobile device – and it’s growing 6 percent per month,” he said. “They used our product, set up low risk low cost experiment.

“People who came from a mobile device, they would be put in a test campaign, while some
would see full site, others would see a trimmed down version of the site.”

Vegas.com is a city destination travel Web site with a full range of travel products, including hotel rooms, air-hotel packages, show tickets, tours and golf.

SiteSpect provides multivariate testing and behavioral targeting services, letting Web marketers optimize their Web sites across any browser, including any mobile device. Some of its clients include Wal-Mart, Staples, JCPenney, MTV and Overstock.com.

Mobile testing
Vegas.com is running a controlled A/B test and measuring several key users’ behavioral metrics.

According to the company, it found that mobile users benefit from a mobile-optimized site experience. Vegas.com was able to quantify how the mobile-optimized content influenced user behavior.

Based on the analytics Vegas.com tested, the company realized that it should invest in mobile content development.

“I think the bigger picture is, here’s a company that couple of months ago, didn’t know whether they had to do anything about mobile and in a short period of time they were able to run an experiment with a mobile friendly version of the site,” Mr. Hansen said.

“We didn’t put a lot of time and effort in this test, but it’s giving us data that will give us info and strategy going forward in mobile,” he said. “[Vegas.com said] we need to get serious about this, we’re going in this eyes wide open and they’re shifting investment – it’s been very significant for them.

What happens in Vegas stays in mobile
During the company’s A/B test, Vegas.com saw that its mobile content outperformed regular non-mobile content across a number of key metrics.

The company saw a 22 percent reduction in bounce rate, 16 percent increase in page views and 4 percent lift in conversion rate.

“[Vegas.com] is carving out budget to develop mobile specific content – it’s taken them a while to do, but as opposed to just say we should do it and see if it makes a difference afterwards, they did it the other way around,” Mr. Hansen said.

Final Take