I am adding a step into the buying journey on an eCommerce retail website. I want to test to see if this affects overall conversion rates. Our platform doesn't support A/B testing itself so I'm hoping I can test this using Google Experiments.
A lot of examples for Google Experiments involve having a different page/url to test with, so you want to test a different button style or page layout, different content etc. In my case this doesn't apply as my test is a multipage test, if I add a step here how many of those customers end up on my order confirmation page. The business logic which determines whether to add the additional step is handled via javascript so essentially I want half of my visitors to load to old js file and half to load the new js file and then to see how they differ in Google Experiments.
I'm guessing the only way I can do this is to set-up an experiment where the original page would be
www.mydomain.com/product_page
and my variation page would be
www.mydomain.com/product_page?some_variable=1
Then in my framework I could check for that url parameter and load to new js file. But would that track through the whole buying journey once the customer has left that page?
Any help or suggestions would be very welcome.
Thank You
Saul
Related
I'm currently running an experiment without redirect, using Google Analytics, but I'm running in some issues.
The case
I work for a company that has two websites, with two separate brands, selling the same product. Today, we are plaining a merge of the brands, one of the reasons being the low costs of maintanance.
To see how this would affect sales, we are doing an a/b test. The test consists of changing the logo of the sites, and displaying an information about the merge of brands in the variant. The original is the website without changes.
We have some requirements to do it:
We use a CMS that has no support to the Google Analytics Experiment tag (we get some errors when we install it to the , and are unable to run it)
We need to run it through all pages of our websites. We have also a subdomain in each site, that the user is redirected to place an order.
We doesn't have time to wait for the experiment to end for itself. So, we came up with the idea to track the rejection and sales using a duplicate pageview with "/variant" in the url and in the title.
To do that, I used the Content Experiments without redirects, with the Google Tag Manager.
Configuration of the Experiment
In Google Tag Manager, I load the Content Experiment Javascript API and define the choosenVariation variable in all pages of both websites and subdirectories.
I track the "gtm.load" event, to see when the page finished loading all elements and change the DOM in three ways: changing the logo, adding the content about the merge and add an item to the main menu. All of this, through Javascript.
Along with the changes of the DOM, I add a datalayer called VirtualPageView, and pass the corresponding url with "/variant" and the title with "Variant".
When the datalayer fires, I send a new Pageview with the variant information.
The problem
The experiment is running right, but when a user gets the B variant of the experiment and procceed to a subdomain of our websites to place an order, it seems that it's somehow running another test, and happens to the user get the A variation.
We are trying to persist the original session and the client Id through the domain and subdomain, in order to the user that saw the different logo, continue in his way to order.
I saw this page about Running Experiments across Subdomains, but its about the Classic Analytics and the classic experiment, and we are using the Universal Analytics with the Content Experiment without redirects.
I don't know if my explanation was clear enough, so if someone have doubts, please ask me. I don't have a profound knowledge of Google Analytics or the Content Experiments either. So, if you have a better way to do this, please, tell me.
I came up with a solution to our problem. We agreed to use the experiment only in the pages of the main domain, so I can change the content otherwise in the pages of the subdomain:
When a user visits our main domain, through Google Tag Manager, I created a cookie that says what the result of the variation chosen for the user (0 for the original and 1 for the variation).
When this user goes to our subdomain to place an order, still via GTM I check the cookie to see its value. If its equal to 1 (a variation), I change the logo and the menu, according to our previous configuration, and I send a virtual pageview to help us check the data.
Until now, this is working properly.
I know that it might be odd, but I need your help with the google analytics set up.
Task: I need to set up brochure downloads as a goal for international students on a page https://www.cqu.edu.au/international-students/international-brochures .
In a perfect world, I would need to set up an individual goal for each type of brochure download (postgraduation, undergraduate, English courses) but I decided to start from "all brochures" to save the number of goals that I have for the view. Unfortunately, I don't have a chance to set up "events", so I have to work with goals only.
Final goal destination: Any page containing "pdf_file" in its description.
Pathway: come to International section, move to brochures, then go to brochure page (containing "pdf_file" in its description, for ex. - https://www.cqu.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/158540/2017-Undergraduate-International-Guide.pdf).
The problem: I tried to use regular expressions such as "^/__data/assets/pdf_file/." or ^/pdf_file/(.) and I can't see conversions in real time test.
However, nothing helped, and goals (even the page visit) still aren't tracking correctly. What am I doing wrong? And, if possible, how can I split goals across different brochure types?
Many thanks,
Kirill
You are on the right track. You just need one Goal. The problem you have is that after clicking a pdf document you are being redirected to a PDF viewer iframe. This is a PDF view "page" with no Google analytics tracking code whatsoever.If you use are using destination goals the only way this will work is by having installed the Google Analytics (GA) tracking code at the "final destination page".
One way to track pdf "views" is by creating a short url for each one, hence you will be able to track or check how many of them have views.
Another way is to create an onclick event within each link. But this is only possible if you can setup the events in GA. Creating this kind of event tracking will allow you to set up labels for each pdf's name to be able to identify or track each one of them.
I am running into an issue where my client's website (can refer to domain.com) uses a third party checkout site called rezovation that we can refer to checkout.rezovation.com: I went through this doc here https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/cross-domain and the google setup e-commerce doc (for universal analytics) and I still find it confusing so here are my questions:
1) According to my understanding I need a customized GATC to link both domains checkout.rezovation.com and domain.com?
2) If yes(above), do we setup one customized GATC for cross domain tracking on all pages from checkout.rezovation.com and domain.com? if it is the case can someone provide detail steps on how to set it up (I am not a coder so the easier the guideline, the better)
3) Once cross domain tracking is set up, e commerce tracking code should be only on thank you page should be looking like the image below?
4) Should I add manually all the extra code for the e-commerce tracking code or I can get it done via a third party website?
The question really is: Will they (Rezovation) allow a customized version of the GATC? From what I've seen from them, the answer to that is no. Again, from what I've seen, which is only a a screenshot of the interface where you enter your GAUA number. Ultimately you get in-actionable data that doesn't even pass room nights booked and cannot be attributed to the proper source.
Perhaps they offer another plan that allows true cross domain tracking. It's a shame they don't have it built in because with Universal Analytics it's an extremely easy and consistent customization that would only require one additional input from their clients.
-Theo
I've recently learned about the new Google Analytics Content Experiments which looks interesting. ( http://analytics.blogspot.nl/2012/06/helping-to-create-better-websites.html )
The standard usecase seems to be that for a certain page, say a product detail page, you supply variations (different urls) and select a percentage of users that are included in the test. Such a user will be presented a variation of the product-detail page (and will continue to be presented the same variation over and over for continuation/ux reasons, based on cookies presumably) .
All fine and good.
However, say I have 100 products on my site. Just testing a variation on 1 of those products has imho the following disadvantages:
slow progressing tests because of lower nr of visitors.
the test isn't isolated. I.e: since other product detail pages aren't included in the test, displaying a variation-page for 1 product-detail page while all other product-detail pages show the original can (will) lead to a confusing experience (and thus skewed conversion statistics) for the user that browses multiple products, which most of them do.
To me it seems far better to be able to dynamically include all products of a certain type into the same test (e.g: all TV's) , for example by enabling to set some regular expression or other filter on urls to include in the test.
Is such a thing possible currently, scheduled, useful, or completely missing the point?
EDIT
Part of the solution seems to be "relative urls"
https://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2664470
Taking the previous example one step further, we can see how the use
of relative URLs lets you easily run an experiment on a set of
different original pages, and test visual alternatives across that
group of pages (e.g., the product pages in an e-commerce site).
Remaining question: How to dynamically tag which pages belong to the experiment (e.g: based on regex)
Thanks.
The solution is to use relative url for the variation page.
E.g. you have a number of product pages:
www.mysite.com/products/eggs.html
www.mysite.com/products/cheese.html
www.mysite.com/products/bread.html
etc.
For each page you have a matching variation page:
www.mysite.com/products/eggs.html?var=bigpicture
www.mysite.com/products/cheese.html?var=bigpicture
www.mysite.com/products/bread.html?var=bigpicture
etc.
You want to use all the product pages in 1 experiment.
Go To google Analytics Content Experiments:
For the orginal page choose ONE of the many product pages (e.g. www.mysite.com/products/eggs.html) (This is just to get the experiment code and provide GA with an example page)
For the variation page choose relative url and put ?var=bigpicture
Then place the javascript required for the experiment on ALL the original product pages you want in the experiment
For more information see: http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2664470&topic=1745208&ctx=topic
Use the Javascript API as described here:
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/experiments#pro-server
You can set the experimentid programmatically in your code, on every page. Of course you need first to create the experiment in GA, in doing so provide GA fake urls for each variation, discard the GA generated code, ignore the validation errors.
And just use the experimentid as described in the link above.
OK, so a solution to this is:
Create experiment.
Chose a placeholder url for your original url. Something like www.example.com/products/eggs. Set variations as relative urls eg ?var=large_heading, ?var=small_price
Have some mechanism on the server-side which determines if the current user is part of the experiment. A simple cookie is good enough. If this cookie is present show a variation of the page.
If the user visits a product page but isn't in an experiment then show the javascript given when you created an experiment.
Add something to your product page which checks for the querystring var=[something]. When detected show the appropriate variation as well as setting the cookie which tells marks the user as being in an experiment.
You can hack around the JavaScript that Google gives you to make this a bit easier. Something like:
var variation = utmx('variation_code', 'A/B');
if (variation) { set_a_cookie(variation); }
utmx('url', 'A/B');
This is largely cribbed from the GWO Techie Guide. http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en//websiteoptimizer/techieguide.pdf
There is also a way to the A/B testing with GA without experiment API if you really want to keep things simple. The idea behind it is to create your own split parameter and than you can pass it to GA as a custom variable. So you can yous your own development tools to differentiate the content in the groups and you don't have to use redirect. Here is a simple tutorial how to do this: link.
I recently implemented a GA experiment to test out different text on a nav bar across many pages. This is what worked for me:
Set up the experiment in GA for a single page. E.g. index.html and
index.html?var=menu2.
Implement the solution across multiple pages. Specifically,
insert the GA experiment code in all the pages
that you want to run
the test. Then ensure that your page(s) can render the page
variation based on the parameter passed. My php code went something
like this: If var=menu2, display page with menu2; otherwise,
display original menu.
Site A gives their affiliates an interactive component (traffic map based on Google Maps), which they in turn put on their sites (Site B) in an iframe. The component is dynamic, doesn't change the URL of parent site, and has an id for each affiliate site.
What I would like to do is track the displays of the component. (Price of using Google Maps for the component depends on number of views).
At the moment the component is in <iframe src="http://SiteA.com/q?cp=43.520,18.910,10&cm=1"></iframe>.
I have looked at the other topics but didn't found a solution to that problem. I would really appreciate any help, I had no experience with cross-site tracking yet.
You as siteA owner want to count number of displays of iframe on other sites, correct?
The basic way to do it is logs analysis — every time your server returns page http://SiteA.com/q?cp=43.520,18.910,10&cm=1 or similar it adds an entry to your server's log files. The can be count when. There is a number of solutions for analyzing log data. Some of them opensource and free, other are paid services. For exmaple: http://awstats.sourceforge.net/
There is other ways to count it, but it's probably easiest way of all.