Possible to implement Google Website Optimizer?

[cbsteven]

Google has a Website Optimizer tool which helps you implement multi-variable testing to determine the best design of your site. For example it will help you send half of your customers to a 1-page checkout and the other half to the typical checkout, to see which half have a higher rate of cart abandonment. Things like that.

Is it possible to implement Optimizer on 3dCart?

[3dCartRobb]

Thats called A/B testing. "IF" it were possible to use, then customers would only be able to pay with google checkout. I would suggest checking with google to find out how it gets implemented.

[cbsteven]

A/B testing is a subset of multivariate testing.

http://www.google.com/support/websit...y?answer=61144
I think the most relevant help file would be: http://www.google.com/support/websit...y?answer=61201

I don't see why it would require that users pay with Google Checkout. Google knows if a goal is reached with just the Analytics tracking, which I assume can be in the final "payment received" page.

[cbsteven]

According to the 3DCart twitter account:

"We've had google website optimizer support built in for awhile now. Your clients will love it :)
9:29 AM Sep 12th from TweetDeck in reply to bigcommerce"

So is this true or not? I do not see any official support for it. I don't see how to implement even the most simple A/B content testing in 3DC.

[GonzaloGil]

The setup is mostly do on Google's end, you setup 1 or more pages, ie. extra pages, or product pages, copy & paste a bit of javascript on the item description, or, page content, (depending on what you are doing ab testing on) and that's about it...There is no real interface on 3dcart's side for this.

[cbsteven]

Well as I understand it the responsibility on the cart end is flexibility for providing a user with alternate designs in one navigation path. Would I be able to have a list of categories on my home page, and for 50% of the people who click on my, say, "Components" category page, get landing_page_v1, and the other 50% get landing_page_v2?

[GonzaloGil]

The way it works is that you supply Google with multiple URLS, they provide you with javascript code to put on those pages, then, based on the # of views on each page, it will automatically redirect the customer to the correct page.

The only time 3dcart comes in is that you can paste those javascripts on the page contents, and they will not break anything, you can also create multiple content pages and multiple product pages to test differences.

[66sprite]

I am looking into setting up a Multivariate Test but I am not sure where to point the first link to. I want to test a new layout for my products but I am not sure what the proper link would be.

[jwilliams]

Multivariate Testing

Has anyone setup any substantial multivariate testing via Google Website Optimizer? We want to test several different site templates and are looking for insight into the process.

[ritchey]

I am not sure you will be able to test different types of templates, but I had luck on another cart testing parts of product and category pages.

A KB article by 3dCart on this would be nice! What is possible and not possible for Google Website Optimizer. Tips on where to put the code, verification tips, etc.

[satnavcompany]

Has anyone tried this already? Please share your experience http://imagicon.info/cat/5-6/vbulletin-smile.gif

[cbsteven]

I just set up my first experiment which is to test the site search box. One variation is the default site search that uses QuickSearch, where the user must click the submit button. The variation has quicksearch disabled but allows the user to just hit their enter key to trigger the search.

It was easy to set up. You just need a tracking script in the frame.html file, a bit of code surrounding your site search box, and a tracking script in view_cart.html (or some other page that represents a goal, possible checkout-step4)

You need to use multivariate testing since this lets you test specific sections of a page. A/B testing requires you to use two different pages to switch between, which I don't think is possible with 3DCart's template system.

With multivariate testing you can do things like make small changes to the layout of your product/home page and see which one results in more conversions.

[TheRealBeadman]

Hi. how did you do this? Like you say, I don't see a way to do this with Google Experiments. What did you use to do the same page variants?

[cbsteven]

Unfortunately Google shut down multi-variate testing last summer when they moved their A/B testing over to Google Analytics, and this type of thing became impossible.

BUT, they just added some tools a couple of weeks ago that make it possible again. It is significantly more complicated now, though, and I haven't tried to set one up yet.

https://developers.google.com/analyt...ts-client-side

[ritchey]

Checkout solutions that cost from visualwebsiteoptimizer, optimizely, or convert.com