Are You Using Google Website Optimizer Tool On Your Web pages?

What is Google website optimizer? This is a free tool that is used for creating experiments to test conversion rates. All you have to do is just set up the experiment for different aspects of your pages and the Google will randomly serve the different versions of your pages to actual visitors to your page.

The advantages that are attached to this method of testing as compared to other testing methods are huge.

Google website optimizer uses people who are in your target audience to take part in the experiment as compared to other sites who use people who may not be in your target market.

A/B Testing VS Multivariate Testing

The Google website optimizer allows you to conduct both multivariate tests and A/B tests.

In A/B testing you are allowed to test two versions of the same page and is quite effective in testing two designs of a page that are completely different.

In the case of a multivariate test, you are allowed to test multiple elements of your page at the same time.

This method helps you to save a lot of time especially if you have a number of elements that you would like to test which you would have had test one by one if you had decided to go with A/B testing.

What Should Your Conversion Rate Be?

The conversion rate that you want to achieve should be twice that you currently have or it should be at least 10%. Always aim to get a higher conversion rate with every campaign that you run.

What Should You Test?

Once you have figured out what your conversion rates goals are you can start thinking about what you would like to test.

There are a number of things that you can test on your page. these include:

The size and position of your brand logo,

The color theme of your page,

The size position and color of your headline,

The layout of your landing page the CTA and headline of your page,

The copy,

The number and quality of images used,

Number of related products and the field labels and length of all,

If there are any, forms on your landing page.

The test conducting will be different each website but what is important in running a test that is successful is deciding what elements to test.

Where Should You Start Testing?

Many people would think that all you have to do is dive in and start testing but this is not the case.

You have to be methodical in how you go about testing the different elements of your page.

You have to think about what your current conversion looks like and see which page the prospects get to and leave your website the most.

You should start testing with the worst affected page first and work your way up to the least affected page.

Once you get to know which pages you want to test and the possible elements of these pages that you really feel need to be tested, you can start thinking about the different variable that you will introduce to your experiment.

You should make sure you come up with at least six variables of the same element and then test them or you could even pick the best variables and test them against each other.

Once you have set up your experiment Google website optimizer will do the rest of the work.

Please do not feel tempted to run any additional tests as this will make it really hard for you to be able to manage different pages simultaneously.

Also, keep in mind that when you test similar variations of the same element they will give you inconclusive results and you would be better off just trying radically different variables.

How to Set Up Your Test

As we previously stated the Google website optimizer has got two different tests that you can run.

The two methods have guides for setting up an experiment though they are a bit technical and will require that you have at least some basic knowledge about HTML or you get help from someone who does.

Not looking at the technical bit of the experiment set up there is a procedure that you need to follow to set up a successful experiment and it is as follows:

1. You should make a decision on what you want tested and come up with variables to these elements. Ensure you select your test page and conversion page as well.

2. Set up the content that you want to be tested always keeping in mind that variables which are radically different will give you the best results.

3. You can then choose if you want the test to be restricted to only a small percentage of the visitors you receive on your website though we wouldn’t recommend that you do this as it will increase the time period for running the test.

4. After you are done setting up the experiment you will be prompted to enter the code that Google website optimizer will give you into the pages to be tested before the test can begin to run.

5. Once all is done you will have to wait patiently for your results.

Tips on How to Get the Most out Of Your Google website optimizer

• You should not focus so much on the number of completed sales or sign-ups but instead focus on getting your visitors from one page of the website to the next as they follow each other on your conversion funnel.

• Do not neglect you site wide tests such as testing the navigation, header etc. and find out whether they make any noticeable gains on your rate of conversion.

• You should strongly think about segmenting the visitors you get on your website so you can run different types of test on the different groups of prospects you have.

You can segment the prospects based on different aspects such as where they are landing from, their home country or location.

• Try what your competitors are currently doing and see how well it fares for you business whether it’s a new website design or a different sales style.

• Run multiple tests simultaneously so as to save a lot of very valuable time. This will also mean that you can get your page which has been fully optimized up and running faster than if you did each test separately.

• Test big changes in your pages. We already told you to test radically different variables of page elements but here we are talking about testing two different pages altogether.

• Though Google website optimizer allows you to run your test for as long as you wish, it is important that you run it for the shortest time possible.

You should run the test for just a couple of weeks because a longer time frame will expose your results to fluctuation or influence from what your competition is doing.

• Ensure that you identify your goals before you even start thinking of running the test. These include your business’s long-term positioning and marketing goals and making sure that your tests meet these set goals.