Google’s free page testing tool

Website OptimiserLast week on April 5th, Google launched Website Optimiser, a free multivariate testing tool. I know it should be spelt Optimizer, but I just can’t bring myself to ruin the English language!

Simply put, multivariate testing is a way of testing the effectiveness of different content combinations on your web pages. By effectiveness I mean the ability to solicit a conversion. For example, suppose you have multiple photographs of a product you sell via your web site. Which one (or combination of several) best achieves the desired effect of converting your visitors into purchasers?

Traditionally you would test one combination at a time. Using Website Optimiser, you simply create a page experiment and host your alternative content at Google. Google then delivers all possible combinations at random to visitors and measures the success (or not) of each combination by integrating with Google Analytics.

Similarly you can try combinations of titles, headlines, buttons, links, colours, paragraphs of text, even entire page redesigns. In effect, Website Optimiser begins to close the loop for web analysts i.e. measure, analyse, test.

Key features of Website Optimiser:

  • Multivariate testing tool (full factorial)
  • Test up to 8 page sections simultaneously
  • Test up to 1000 combinations simultaneously
  • Free

Already some of the Google Analytics Authorised Consultants (GAACs) and Website Optimiser Authorised Consultants (WOACs) are doing some very clever things combining the power of WO and GA.

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1 Comment

  1. Shawn Purtell

    Thanks for the kind words and the link to my article. I hope everyone will find the integration as useful as I do.

    Reply

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