Google Website Optimizer v 1.0 The Techie Guide - Manual (Page 22)

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The Techie Guide to Google Website Optimizer
Experiments with Dynamic Content
3. The visitor will immediately be redirected to product.php?pid=123&variation=b
4. The page product.php?pid=123&variation=b loads
5. The GWO display code will NOT be included
6. dynamic_include_b.php will be included
When setting up this experiment, you’d use these URLs:
• Original: http://ww w.mysite.com/product.php
• Test Variation B: http://ww w.mysite.com/product.php?variation=b
• Test Variation C: http://ww w.mysite.com/product.php?variation=c
If your product.php page returns an error when no product id is passed in, simply use the offline validation.
Let’s say you set up an A/B experiment with these values:
• Original page: http://ww w.mysite.com/page.php
• Test Variation B: http://ww w.mysite.com/page.php?track=456&variation=b
• Test Variation C: http://ww w.mysite.com/page.php?track=789&variation=c
A visitor reaches the page for the first time using this URL:
http://ww w.mysite.com/page.php?track=123&productID=72
GWO rolls the dice and chooses to redirect the visitor to the URL for variation B.
Since both the current URL and the test page URL have the track parameter, the visitor will be redirected to
this URL: http://ww w.mysite.com/page.php?track=456&productID=72&variation=b
Point to remember
Technically, GWO does not append the parameters from the original page to the test page. It merges the
parameters from the two URLs. GWO will favor the parameter values from the URLs for the alternative
test pages entered during the experiment setup.