Saying goodbye to the Google Website Optimizer Blog

Wednesday, August 01, 2012 8/01/2012 09:13:00 AM

Thanks to everyone who has been a loyal reader of this blog over the last few years. As we’ve launched Content Experiments in Google Analytics and continue to evolve that feature set, from now on we’ll post about website testing and experimentation on our main Analytics blog, and we’re retiring this one.  We encourage you to visit the Google Analytics blog or follow us on Google+ for ongoing news and best practices about improving your online efforts.

Posted By Enrique Muñoz Torres, Sr. Product Manager, Google Analytics

Spurious conversions in Website Optimizer reports

Friday, June 08, 2012 6/08/2012 01:21:00 PM

We have gotten reports of spurious conversions appearing in Website Optimizer reports over the last few days.  We have since fixed the underlying problem and reprocessed the affected data.  Please do let us know if you still see any problems with the numbers in your reports.  We apologize for the inconvenience.

Posted by Enrique Muñoz Torres, Sr. Product Manager, Google Analytics

Helping to create better websites: Introducing Content Experiments

Friday, June 01, 2012 6/01/2012 10:18:00 AM

Over the last 5 years, it’s been great to see how many marketers and publishers have improved the web by using insights from Google Website Optimizer to create better experiences for their visitors. Today, we announced that we’re bringing website testing to Google Analytics. This means that we’ll be saying goodbye to the standalone version as we welcome a fully integrated website testing tool in Google Analytics.

Content Experiments helps you optimize for goals you have already defined in your Google Analytics account, and can help you decide which page designs, layouts and content are most effective. With Content Experiments, you can develop several versions of a page and show different versions to different visitors. Google Analytics measures the efficacy of each page version, and with a new advanced statistical engine, it determines the most effective version.  Take a look at this video to learn more:


Testing and experimentation of websites may sound complicated, but we've worked hard to provide a testing tool that makes it as easy as possible:

• Content Experiments comes with a setup wizard that walks you step by step through setting up experiments, which helps you quickly launch new tests.

• Content Experiments reuses Google Analytics tags so that you only need to add one additional tag to the original page.

• Content Experiments helps you understand which content performs best, and identifies a winner as soon as statistically significant data has been collected.

• Since content testing is so important, we’ve placed Content Experiments just a click away from your regular diagnosis reports in Google Analytics.

We’re excited to integrate this important functionality into Google Analytics and believe it will help you meet your goals of measuring, testing and optimizing all in one place. With full integration in Google Analytics, we’ll be able to grow and evolve website experimentation tools within our broader measurement platform. Initially, you’ll be able to utilize important features like optimized goal conversions, easier tagging and advanced segmentation in reports. We’re also working hard to release page metrics, additional goal conversion options and experiment suggestions.

The last day you’ll be able to access Google Website Optimizer, and any reports for current or past experiments, will be August 1, 2012. While it won’t be possible to migrate experiments or reports to Google Analytics, up until August 1 you can download your reports to retain your data.  We encourage you to start any new experiments in Content Experiments. For those of you that are new to website experimentation, we hope you’ll try out the new Google Analytics Content Experiments.

This is just the first step we’re taking to simplify website testing, and we look forward to integrating more features into the experimentation framework of Google Analytics.  Content Experiments will be gradually rolling out over the next few weeks to all users. Once available in your account, you can start testing by going to Google Analytics and accessing Experiments within the Content section of your reports. If you’re new to Google Analytics, you can sign up here.

We’ll continue to have a strong network of Google Analytics Certified Partners who will be able to provide advanced support for Analytics, including Content Experiments. If you would like professional assistance in designing, implementing, or interpreting the results of a test, simply go to the Google Analytics Partner page and select "Website Optimizer" from the Specialization menu.  You can also find more information in our help center. Please try out Content Experiments and let us know what you think.

Happy testing!

Posted by Nir Tzemah, Google Analytics team

Case Study: Universal Technical Institute Increases Application Requests Eight-fold With Website Optimizer

Wednesday, March 09, 2011 3/09/2011 02:28:00 PM

UTI revved up their conversion rate with Google Website Optimizer. By conducting rigorous testing, making design improvements to their landing pages, and increasing AdWords investment to capitalize on their higher conversion rates, UTI cut their cost-per-application request in half and increased their request volume by more than 700% in in marketing campaigns that used the new landing pages. Read more to learn how they did it!

Since 1965, Universal Technical Institute has helped automotive enthusiasts turn their passions into careers. Offering programs in Automotive, Diesel, Collision, and Motorcycle Repair, as well as courses to become a Marine or NASCAR technician, UTI has trained more than 140,000 professionals in the automotive industry. Today, UTI operates 11 campuses, and currently has more than 15,000 students that are working with their hands to learn career skills that will last a lifetime.

The Goal: Improve Conversion Rates Through Website Optimization

UTI has been an AdWords advertiser since 2004. After years of fine-tuning their search campaigns, and successful investments in Display, Mobile, and YouTube, UTI was looking for their next big avenue of growth. After doing some research - they realized the opportunity was right in front of them, on their own site! With the help of Website Optimizer, UTI tested different calls-to-action, images, videos, buttons, and button placements. After many different landing page combinations, they ultimately settled on a winner.

The Results: A Great-looking Landing Page and a 300% Increase in Conversion Rate

UTI's new landing page was a dramatic departure from their previous landing page. Most notable is their use of “gradual engagement” - asking for user’s information in several steps rather than showing an intimidating 15-field sign-up form.

Original landing page (click to see full size)

New landing page (click to see full size)

“Prospective Students responded extremely well to our new landing pages,” said Loring Kohrt, Online Marketing Manager for UTI, “not only did we triple our conversion rate, we reduced our exit rate and saw a boost in site engagement metrics across the board.”

More Good News: The Effect on Advertising

The jump in conversion volume was substantial and immediate, but UTI didn’t stop there. Realizing that their increased conversion rates had dramatically lowered their cost-per-lead, UTI decided that they had room to bid much more aggressively on Google’s Search and Display Networks. By doing so, they increased their average position, and brought in eight times the conversions at about half the CPA!

Improving conversion rate amplified all other marketing activities

Reflecting on his experience, Mr. Kohrt said “We are tremendously happy with the results of our redesign. We were able to dramatically improve the profitability of our advertising, increase our enrollments, and deliver a better experience to potential students.”

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

New Year, New Asynchronous Tags for GWO

Wednesday, January 05, 2011 1/05/2011 12:27:00 PM

Happy New Year fellow testers! We’ve just made a change to the Website Optimizer tags that will help your pages load faster, improve data accuracy, and eliminate tracking errors when tags are not fully loaded.

The next time you go to create an experiment, you’ll be given the new tags, which use asynchronous JavaScript. Asynchronous tagging, which is already a standard for Google Analytics, allows the Website Optimizer tracking and conversion scripts to run in parallel to your site loading. For Website Optimizer veterans, these new tags appear in Step 2 of the setup wizard -- be sure to read the instructions as the installation is slightly different.

Here’s five things you should know about the new tags:

1. The traditional (non-async) snippets will continue to work if you want to use them. And there’s no need to retag experiments.
2. We’ve combined the Control Script and Tracking Script into one snippet of code. Be sure not to double tag your pages.
3. Async tags go immediately after the opening <head> tag on your test and conversion pages, not at the bottom of the page like the old tags.
4. If you customize your Control Scripts (for experiments with cross-domain experiments and the like), the Control Script still uses urchin.js-style methods.
5. Articles in the Help Center have been updated to reflect the new tags though we still have articles with the traditional tag for your reference.

Here’s to winning experiments in the new year.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Welcome, Google Apps users!

Thursday, December 09, 2010 12/09/2010 02:39:00 PM

Google Apps recently launched an improvement that made dozens of exciting Google services available to Google Apps users for the first time. As part of this launch, Google Website Optimizer is now available to our Google Apps users for free with their Apps accounts.

Google Apps is Google’s suite of cloud-based messaging and collaboration apps, including Gmail, calendar, documents, spreadsheets, and more, specifically optimized for use in organizations. These services, which run entirely in the cloud, are used by more than 30 million users in small and large businesses, educational institutions, government agencies, and non-profit organizations around the world. You can learn more about how Google Apps can lower IT costs and improve productivity and collaboration at your organization at google.com/apps.

For those users who have a Google Apps account, if your administrator has already transitioned your organization to the new infrastructure, you can get started using Google Website Optimizer at google.com/websiteoptimizer with your existing Apps account.

For more details, read the complete post on the Google Enterprise blog and follow all the updates on other newly available services for Google Apps users.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team

Update your Website Optimizer scripts to secure your site

Tuesday, December 07, 2010 12/07/2010 10:14:00 AM

Earlier this week we notified affected Website Optimizer users of a potential security issue with the Website Optimizer Control Script. If a website or browser has already been compromised by a separate attack, a hacker might also be able to execute malicious code by exploiting a bug in the Website Optimizer Control Script.

We have not seen any evidence indicating that sites using Website Optimizer have been targeted through this bug, but wanted to proactively reach out to site owners. While the probability of this attack is very low, we are urging Website Optimizer users to take action by updating their Control Scripts. We have taken action, so all new experiments created after December 3 are not susceptible.

Any experiments you are currently running need to be updated to fix the issue on your site. Additionally, if you have any Website Optimizer scripts from paused or stopped experiments created before December 3, you should remove or update that code as well.

There are two ways to update your code:

1. Stop current experiments, remove the old scripts, and create a new experiment.
2. Update the code on your site directly. We strongly recommend creating a new experiment as it is the simpler method.

Instructions for both methods are available here at the Website Optimizer Help Center.

We’re committed to keeping Website Optimizer secure, and we will proactively work to prevent any future vulnerabilities.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Website Optimizer team