Conversion rate optimization (CRO) means designing an e-commerce web interface so that as many users as possible take a desired action such as registering for an account, requesting a contact, or making a purchase. Such design is usually done by hand, evaluating one change at a time through A/B testing, or evaluating all combinations of two or three variables through multivariate testing. Traditional CRO is thus limited to a small fraction of the design space only. This paper describes Sentient Ascend, an automatic CRO system that uses evolutionary search to discover effective web interfaces given a human-designed search space. Design candidates are evaluated in parallel on line with real users, making it possible to discover and utilize interactions between the design elements that are difficult to identify otherwise. A commercial product since September 2016, Ascend has been applied to numerous web interfaces across industries and search space sizes, with up to four-fold improvements over human design. Ascend can therefore be seen as massively multivariate CRO made possible by AI.

San Francisco, Calif.: Sentient Technologies, the provider of distributed artificial intelligence (AI), today announced Sentient Ascend, the first conversion rate optimization (CRO) solution that uses AI to evolve winning designs for online marketers. Improving testing speeds by as much as 100 times or more over current A/B and multivariate testing solutions, Ascend gives marketers the freedom to try many more copy, image, design and interaction changes to accelerate the path to increased revenues and conversions. Existing A/B testing tools can only evaluate the impact of one marketing idea at a time and require substantial traffic to achieve a result, and existing multivariate testing solutions require even more traffic to test a limited number of changes. With Ascend, marketers can test dozens of ideas simultaneously, and the AI determines not only which individual changes are helpful, but also which combination of changes achieves the best results. Some early Ascend customers are testing millions of potential design combinations at once.

Lounge apparel retailer FlyPolar uses a new service from vendor Sentient Technologies to test many elements quickly across multiple pages and is on track to double sales this month. Artificial intelligence can lead to real sales increases--and fast ones, too. Just ask loungewear retailer ShopFlyPolar.com. The web only merchant had hit a sales downturn, generating about 277,000 in web sales in February 2015 to about 50,000 in July 2016 says, says Shawn Broadus founder and CEO of FlyPolar. "We hit a slump," Broadus say.

Lounge apparel retailer FlyPolar uses a new service from vendor Sentient Technologies to test many elements quickly across multiple pages and is on track to double sales this month. Artificial intelligence can lead to real sales increases--and fast ones, too. Just ask loungewear retailer ShopFlyPolar.com. The web only merchant had hit a sales downturn, generating about 277,000 in web sales in February 2015 to about 50,000 in July 2016 says, says Shawn Broadus founder and CEO of FlyPolar. "We hit a slump," Broadus say.