We use Google Website Optimizer to do A/B testing. We’re trying to set up the following test but we can’t figure out if it’s possible.

We want to test changes in the template design and hence will get reflected on all pages of the site.

Our Adwords campaign has many destination URLs pointing to different inner pages. So, if we make a template design change we would like this change to be split tested for all inner pages traffic automatically.

However, it seems to us that GWO allows us to split test only one page against one other variation. Hence, traffic to inner pages isn’t going to count towards our split test result.

Does anyone know if GWO can be configured to do the above? How about other split testing products? Can any do this?

Yes that’s possible.

Show 50% of the website traffic to the original template and the other 50% to the template with changes. it’s like a normal A/B test.

best
Adriaan

Hi Adriaan,

Not sure what you mean by:
>> Show 50% of the website traffic to the original template

As far as I know, in GWO you always need to specify a URL (a single page) to send traffic to. Are you saying there is a setting somewhere where you specify a template change (rather than a page change) for which GWO will then split traffic for all pages automatically?

A multivariate test in GWO would be more useful in this case. A GWO A/B test would require separate URL’s; a multivariate test does not. So use a multivariate test and trim it down to the few versions you really want to test.

You can treat the template just like an individual page and insert the necessary codes there. Although GWO wants you to specify a URL during setup, this URL won’t be needed for the test.

You can find more information in the Techie’s Guide to GWO: http://www.google.com/websiteoptimizer/techieguide.pdf

Another way to implement a site-wide A/B test would be to make several versions of the template and randomly decide which one a user gets to see. You could use a cookie to remember the template and continue to show the same one to a user. Then track it when a conversion occurs.