A/B testing and Google Optimize

A/B Testing (or A/B/C or A/B/C/D testing) is used when the marketer or web designer wants to choose between one of two or more versions of a webpage.

For instance, evaluating different versions of an advertisement or a marketing campaign. Marketers can pre-test campaigns (A/B testing) before they are launched, and continue to evaluate them in real time after they are launched.

It is not only easier to manage, control and execute test programmes on the net; it is also much less expensive. For these reasons, consumer marketing companies may evaluate campaigns on the net before airing them on TV.

Testing can be outsourced easily to analytics service providers such as Google Analytics, by inserting the appropriate code in the test pages.

Google Optimize is a feature-rich A/B Testing facility supported within Google Analytics. As depicted in Exhibit 20.15, this facility, accessed via Behavior and Experiments on the side-menu, is a 4-step process:

1. Set objective: The options are Pageviews, Bounces and Session Duration.
2. Configure: Select the webpages to be tested.
3. Set-up: User/webmaster manually inserts code, such as snippet shown towards the right of Exhibit 20.15, into the selected webpages.
4. Review and start.