Google Website Optimizer v 1.0 The Techie Guide - Manual (Page 25)

25
The Techie Guide to Google Website Optimizer
Other Advanced Stuff
Review and launch
1. Double-check your experiment setup, and designate how much traffic to include in the experiment.
2. Click
Launch now to launch the experiment.
3. View your reports
Although the reports will not offer any definitive conclusions for a while, you should check your reports after
a few hours to make sure impressions and conversions are being recorded, and that the traffic recorded in
the experiment is consistent with the traffic measured by your web analytics tools. Zero impressions and
conversions, or serious discrepancies, may indicate that the experiment tags were not installed correctly.
Note that each alternative page is considered a ‘combination’ in your reports. Page section reports can be
ignored during A/B testing, as you’re concerned with entire pages (combinations) instead of page sections.
Stopping the experiment
You can stop the experiment at any time, regardless of whether or not Website Optimizer has identified a
clear winner. The experiment will continue for as long as you want it to.
(Note: You can get these same details in this AdWords Help Center entry: http://adwords.google.com/support/
bin/answer.py?answer=62999 .)
Segmenting traffic
Here’s another popular question: “How can I segment traffic so only some of my users are part of my
experiment?”
Why do that? So you can remove any internal traffic from the experiment, test only new visitors, only
users coming from AdWords, or manage other variables. Google Website Optimizer doesn’t do this out of the
box though we hope to add it in the future.
But! Let us pass on this workaround suggested by a user:
“If your pages aren’t static HTML pages, you can simply add some backend code that conditionally
outputs the GWO code. Here is some pseudo code:
< if (show visitor GWO code)>
include gwo_code.include
Make sure to use conditional logic for all sections of the test page!
Also, from a testing perspective, if a visitor isn’t shown the experiment at first, that visitor should
continue to not see the experiment.
If you’re running an MVT experiment this includes the Control Script, the Section Script and the
Tracking Script. If you’re running an A/B this includes the Control Script (on the original page) and
the Tracking Script (on the original and all test pages)
You don’t have to worry about conditionally including the Conversion Script on the conversion page.
If a visitor reaches the conversion page without having executed the Control Script, they won’t be
counted as part of the experiment.“