Google Experiments issues

[themegroup]

Hey fellow Mozzers!

We're in the middle of working on CRO for a client of ours and we were going to try out Google Experiments for the first time.

Following the click path described on the Google help page should take me to an option that says 'Create Experiment', but this isn't coming up - do we need to create the various URLs before it will let us set up an experiment, or has the system changed now? I've found in the past Google has a habit of updating its interfaces but not the advice on using the affected tools, so wondering if I'm looking at old information?

Secondly, does the Experiment show a user the same variation of the page throughout their journey? What I mean by that is: their site currently has a real mish-mash of page styles, and I think a large part of boosting their conversions is probably down to ensuring consistency across the site as it currently seems like you're bouncing around different sites. But will this issue be made worse by running Experiments - ie, will I enter the site on Variation A, click a link and be shown the next page in Variation B and so on?

If so, are we better off running the experiment on one page at a time and using what we've learnt to impact the next page?

Thank for any help you can give!

Nick.

[Carson-Ward]

Hi Nick,

Regarding the path, you will need at least a second variation URL in step 2, but it does not need to be live. At the end of step 4, make sure there are no errors. The most likely error on step 4 is that the code is not on your page. You wouldn't want to click "start test" if the pages weren't live either, obviously.

Now to the question of showing the same page throughout the journey. Experiments does not do this by default; it's more of a landing page tool. There is a way to make it happen, and that's to change the navigation on the test version. I've seen companies either clone every page that links to the test with links to version 1 and 2 (yuck) or use a cookie that switches out all links to the original with the test version if a cookie is fired from the test version. The difficulty of doing this will vary based on your developer's skills and the CMS you're using.

These work-arounds are not ideal, and they introduce more potential errors - as all complexity does. It really only works for small sites and landing pages with limited paths in and out. If you're looking to keep the experiment consistent and run a lot of tests I would strongly recommend checking out a tool like Optimizely.

I've worked with Optimizely in the past, and had nothing but great experiences. Just make sure to test multiple screen sizes before you launch.