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I get a lot of compliments on my site; most people talk about the photographs, or how it just seems a little different from a lot of the other sites out there. A common thread seems to be that people are wowed by the simple black and white of it all. (Thanks again, kp, for your endless amounts of patience and guidance!)

Did I do some pre-emptive Taguchi Multivariate testing? No. If I had, I doubt I would have the same site. It would probably be ice blue with pictures of people's faces…not my legs trotting around Montreal. There would probably be an element of colour saturation. (Gee, rich deep red? Or vibrant orange?) In art school I had to study colour theory. I understand that colour influences behaviour, and that people react well to some colours and not to others. Colour is a huge part of any advertising campaign. But the buzz around Taguchi Multivariate testing is just going way, way beyond. It is the magic elixir that so many people seem to be searching for.

Marketing folks seem to be climbing on the bandwagon, fiddling with colours and images, and forgetting about the "Why?" behind the reactions. Blind faith in the ability to tinker with aesthetic elements is indicative of the silo-bound thinking that seems to pass for marketing these days.

The online marketing industry loves techie Web reporting or cool software programs that show variables. And everyone seems to think that if you are measuring you are succeeding. But reporting data is different from analyzing it. Business intelligence is asking those powerful questions. You can't stuff human thinking into left-mind analytics.

There is no magic elixir. It is planning. It is understanding that every click represents a living breathing person. It is understanding why and how people are coming to your site, interacting with your site and either buying, or not buying what you offer. When you do that, you can effectively understand conversions, instead of a simple A/B formula plugged into a generic software program. No wonder standard industry conversions run about two percent.

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