Observing individuals during site navigation can be critical to determining the usability of your site. Although according to recent data complied by and sponsored by Autonomy there many barriers that can be attributed to websites failing to engage in multivariate testing. The number one reason at 58.9% is lack of time, specifically the study participants stated that they were "Too Busy with other stuff", followed by "Don't know enough about the technology", and "Don't have the internal expertise."

Taking time to test a website for usability should be obvious, so I will only address the latter response. Multivariate testing includes several technologies. The most common practices are 1) Eye Tracking and, 2) Video Play Back Sessions .

Eye tracking includes hardware and software usually in the form of a sophisticated LCD screen that monitors eye gazes. Our eye tracker of choice is the Tobii T60XL.

Video play back sessions provide site visitor anonymity, and a larger self selected sample of users. Two leading companies providing solutions for video playback are ClickTale and Userfly.

Is your company currently using multivariate testing? If so how? If not why?