Monthly Archives: July 2012

Google Analytics Content Experiments

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It is now much easier to do your own A/B tests. In fact you should be able to set them up yourself without having to rely on us to do the installation. Knowing what to test is obviously another question altogether and there is still some tagging involved, but you basically just have to follow the instructions in the new Content Experiments wizard in Google Analytics.

Here are the specific details if you use our Google Analytics tracking solution:

  1. Make sure you have the latest tracking code on your site. You can compare what you have on your site with //www.monitus.net/index.php/account/tracking-code.html.
  2. Only A/B testing is currently supported, not multivariate. I don’t know when multivariate will be added back, so for the time being we can’t do experiments that apply to the whole site or experiments that run on the checkout pages.
  3. You obviously have to create a variation or B page in the store editor or in your web hosting environment. Just make sure that the B page also has the Monitus tracking codes on it.
  4. That’s it! Just follow the wizard in the Contents Experiments:

Step 1 – Choose experiment pages

Note: You can create several variation pages, but as mentioned above make sure that the variation page(s) have the Monitus tracking codes on them.

Step 2 – Set experiment options

Content Experiments works with Google Analytics goals. If you don’t have any goals please create at least one. Tip: you may already have a Sale goal, but I highly recommend an Add to cart goal. It’s not always possible to tie the performance of a landing page directly to sales. That’s why I like mini goals such as Add to carts. See here about setting up an Add to Cart goal in Google Analytics

Step 3 – Add and check experiment code

Here is the only small change to the instructions. You have to add the following code right before the Content Experiments code inside the Head Tag on the original page:

<script type="text/javascript">_uhash="off";monitus_set_cookie("_mgwo_page", "x", "/", "auto", "1");</script>

Once you have done that your original page should have the following structure:

The parts in green are your standard Monitus tracking code installation. The part in yellow is the code from the Content Experiments wizard and the part in purple is the additional code required for Content Experiments and Monitus. Please note that the static file in green at the top has to be before the experiment code.

Validation Step

Because you are using Monitus tags you will get a validation error. No problem – just click the link to skip validation.

Step 4 – Review experiment

Just hit Run Experiment on the next step to start it! There is no special tagging required for the B page(s) or the goal page.