How do you know if the new page you put up on your website is better than the last one ?
The phrase Google Experiments sounds cool. But as with lots of things on the internet, there’s a learning curve and initial confusion often stops people from using them.
When people arrive at a page you want them to do something.
Very often the first version of a page isn’t going to be the best. So after you have a page in place getting some sort of traction, then testing some changes will usually result in better performance : more contacts or more sales.
One way of doing this is to set up a goal ( read this post here ) and let it run for a while. Then change the content of the page.
After the updated page has run for an equal period, you can select the time range ( top-right of the Analytics page ) to show results for before and after the change. Then you can see the performance of each variation.
But Google Experiments are a neater way to go about it, because you can set up 2 or more pages to run simultaneously and divide the visitors between them. Google shows you the results like this …
This is how to do it …
( You do need Google Analytics installed on your website to do this. )
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- Set up 2 pages that you’re going to test ( or create a second version of one that’s already running ).
- You’ll need a goal first for this to run : there’s info on how to do it here.
- Make sure you’re in the Analytics Reporting section ( the option’s in the top, horizontal menu ).
- In the left-hand column, go to Behaviour > Experiments.
- Click the Create Experiment button, which is above the main table.
- Under Objective for this experiment, Select a metric, choose the previously set up goal.
- I like to distribute traffic evenly across all variations, which needs to be selected in the Advanced Options.
- Then step (2) Configure your experiment, is where you past in the addresses of the website page variations.
- Step (3) is to paste the experiment code into the page code of the original page and then you can start ( if you get stuck on this part & need advice then email me at support@spellboundweb.com).
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If you’re interested in learning more about this type of thing, you might be interested in www.marketing102.com.