How To do The Experiment
In Google Analytics, open the profile in which you want to create the experiment.
Click the Standard Reporting tab. Expand the Content section, and then click Experiments.
If this is your first experiment, click START EXPERIMENTING.
If you have already created other experiments, click Create experiment above the list of current experiments.
When you create an experiment, Google Analytics assumes that you have already taken time to prepare. That preparation includes identifying the goal of your test, choosing your conversion page, choosing your original page, creating your variation pages, making sure the Google Analytics tracking code has been added to all pages, and determining the percentage of visitors you want to be included in your experiment.
1. Name Your Experiment and Select the Pages
In the Experiment name field, enter the name you want to use for the experiment. This name appears on your experiment list and in the experiment report. The name is also used to refer to your experiment in emails and notifications.Next, identify the pages you want to include in your experiment.
In the Original Page URL field, enter the URL of the page you want to use as your control (for example, your existing home page, or the existing landing page for a product), then press Enter. If that page is live and publicly accessible, you see a snapshot of the page.
In the Name field just below the URL, enter a name for the original page so that it's easy to identify in your experiment report.
You can then specify variation pages, which should also be publicly accessible, by entering their URLs and giving them names. To add more variations, click + Add Variation near the bottom. To delete a variation, click the X next to that variation's name. You can include up to five variations of a page.
If your variation pages do not appear in the preview and you're sure they're available on your web server, investigate the known reasons for pages not appearing.When you have identified all the pages you want to include, click Next near the bottom of the page.
Learn more about using dynamic URLs for your original or variation pages
2. Set Experiment Options
Under Google Analytics goal to improve, select one of your Analytics goals. Here you can make use of existing goals which you have set in the corresponding GA Profile.If you have not already created Analytics goals, or you want to create a new one now for the experiment, click + Add new goal.
If you create a new goal, click your browser's back button when you have finished, or click the experiment name in the list to continue with this step.
Under Visitors included in experiment, select the percentage of visitors you want to include. Here we need to give 100% so that both the original & variation page will get an equal distribution of 50% depending upon different users, IP & browsers.
3. Add and Check Experiment Code
In this step, you have two options for adding the experiment code to your original page: either we can add the code by ourselves or have the option for webmaster also. It is important that all of the experiment pages need the presence of GA code.
Check Your Code
Once we added the experiment code to our original page, click Next to verify the code. Interesting thing is we don’t need to add any tracking code either in variation or in conversion page, only need control script in the original page . After adding the code, Content Experiments checks to make sure the experiment code has been added correctly, and that each page contains the Analytics tracking code. For each page that is coded correctly, you see a green checkmark. If a page is not coded correctly, Content Experiments explains the mistakes and suggests the solutions & thus making it more clear to sort out.
When you've successfully coded your pages, you can proceed to Step 4.
If validation for your variation pages fails and you're sure the experiment code has been properly added to your original page, it may be due to your web server not allowing unknown URL parameters.
4. Review and Run Your Experiment
Here we have preview option just in the Google Website Optimizer .Click Preview all to verify that your pages are being displayed properly including both the original & the variation. If You are unable to preview the Page we need to check the experiment settings & need to sort it out.
To start your experiment, click Run experiment now button.
Now you will be able to see that when you are accessing the original page you will be able to see either the original or variation page depending upon different systems, IPS & different browsers.
Advantages
1. The first advantage is we don’t need to add the customized GA code which we are using for fixing the direct visit issue as it is integrated in Google Analytics itself.
2.Only the control script will be necessary to run tests, the script that redirects the traffic from the original page to the variations. No need to put the tracking script in either the variation page or conversion page.
3.Tests results will not appear for at least 2 weeks. According to Google this is a mechanism to encourage statistical significance and avoid fluctuations in traffic patterns.
The Google Analytics team clarified that “While we won’t declare a winner for the first 2 weeks, we will be sharing test results from the very first days. It’s a small distinction, but an important one.”
4.Tests will automatically expire after 3 months to prevent leaving tests running if they are unlikely to have a statistically significant winner. This is a very good scenario as it will prevent the prolonged time experiments.
5.The test will provide the source referrer of variation page also.
Disadvantages
1.Multivariate Testing will not be available anymore. Google will rebuild this functionality at some point in the future (read this testing framework for more on the differences between A/B and multivariate testing).
2. E-commerce transactions as the goal will not be available
3. Maximum of 5 variations per test: this is a very big disadvantage and will limit tests significantly.
4. Maximum of 12 tests per profile at this time: another big disadvantage for companies doing many tests. The Google Analytics team clarified that”the maximum is 12 active/draft tests per profile. People can create more than 12 tests per profile over time, just not run them all at once.”
Always try to test out the new experiments which will determine the future of tomorrow's Internet Marketing World.
