Google Website Optimizer v 1.0 The Techie Guide - Manual (Page 13)

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The Techie Guide to Google Website Optimizer
Non-Standard Experiments
Original versions of content
When the original version of the content is displayed, GWO does NOT make any modification to the content
in the section. The only place that the original content exists (for the purposes of displaying to end users) is
in the page itself. If you make any changes to the original content on the page that’s what visitors will see
when they are chosen to see the original. Keep in mind that changing content in the middle of an experiment
will screw up the stats for the original and effectively invalidate the experiment as a whole. So, you probably
don’t want to do that.
In other words, if you set up an experiment with this code:
utmx_function(“headline”)
...and then after setting up the experiment, changed the code on your page to this:
utmx_function(“headline”)
The content that would now be displayed for the original version is:
Acme Widgets - Buy One Get One Free.
Now that we better understand what the setup process does, let’s look at some common scenarios that don’t
fit the simpler setup scenario:
• Development & production servers that have different URLs (usually just the domain name: http://
dev.mysite.com and http://www.mysite.com)
• Pages that aren’t directly accessible by GWO (pages behind a firewall, pages that require a username
and password, or pages that use the same URL but display differently)
• Multiple “pages” that share the same page name but use parameters to display different content
(such as product_page.php?pid=5 and product_page.php?pid=6)
Setting up Multivariate Tests
Step 1: Set up test and goal pages
Experiment name is used only within your GWO account. You’ll see it on the list of experiments in your
account, but visitors to your website won’t see it.
Test page URL is used only during the setup process and for the preview function. After you’re done setting up
your experiment, Website Optimizer won’t use this URL in any way other than to show a preview within GWO
-- for example, when you preview how a combination or variation looks by clicking the combination on the
report page. If you plan to upload pages manually, then this field won’t matter.