27 July 2009
How to do A/B Testing in WordPress
We recently posted about how 37signals increased their sign-ups by 200% with A/B Testing.
A lot of you are using WordPress, which makes A/B testing pretty tricky, so we’ve recorded a screencast tutorial to show you how to do it.
Editor’s note: We’ll be covering topics like A/B testing and marketing your web app at The Future of Web Apps London.
If you’re new to A/B testing, here are a few resources to get you started:
- An Introduction to A/B Testing by Jesse Farmer
- Wikipedia definition
- Google Website Optimizer video tutorials
- Advanced Website Optimizer Tricks
- Official Google Website Optimizer blog
- Google Website Optimizer Tricks
The Video
Please note, if your goal page is on a different domain or sub-domain, you need to make small modifications to your tracking code.
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Ross Bearman
# July 27, 2009 - 10:16 am
Good screencast, I’ve just been setting up this system for a client application I’m currently building around WordPress.
Amazing how easy it is to get addicted to A/B testing!
Ryan Carson
# July 27, 2009 - 10:26 am
I know – it makes you want to start testing everything :)
Angela McCall
# August 7, 2009 - 4:38 pm
I agree, Ross, A/B Testing is a necessary function but I have wrestled with the questions that this article has answered. Our clients should appreciate the value of this tool.
John Turner
# July 27, 2009 - 12:55 pm
Google Optimizer is cool, I didn’t even know it existed.
By the way , what screencast software do you use?
Ryan Carson
# July 27, 2009 - 1:33 pm
Hey John – I used iShowU – a great little app for the Mac. For the video of me talking, I just used PhotoBooth.
Gene Crawford
# July 27, 2009 - 1:11 pm
Great overview on A/B testing Ryan. Was just starting to get into this for ourselves and have had some clients asking about it, so your video is right on time. Thanks for pulling this together!
Jerome
# July 27, 2009 - 3:18 pm
thanks for the great lesson, Ryan.
wordpress is really cool for non-techie like me.
Benjamin Alijagić
# July 27, 2009 - 4:04 pm
Great video! Please more testing tutorials!
Mike P
# July 27, 2009 - 6:30 pm
Thanks for this video! I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this for some time.
Additional question: What if my goal is getting them to click an outbound link? (I’m an author marketing my books on Amazon.)
Since I can’t put tracking code on an Amazon page, would it work to make a page on my site that just redirects to the Amazon page, but also includes the optimizer javascript?
Something like: mysite.com/book.html (and the file would consist of the optimizer javascript, followed by the redirect javascript)?
Ryan Carson
# July 27, 2009 - 7:37 pm
That should work fine, however, I’ve never done it.
Also, you can connect Google Analytics with Google Website Optimizer, so you can create Goals and measure those. You’d need to get Amazon to send buyers back to a thankyou page on your site though, and I don’t know if that’s possible.
Mike P
# July 27, 2009 - 7:45 pm
Cool. Thanks for the reply–I’ll give it a go tonight. :)
(As to getting Amazon to send people back to my site, I can’t imagine how I’d do that. They’re not the most responsive to authors/publishers/vendors. They know they’re holding all the cards, so to speak.)
Neue Links
# July 27, 2009 - 10:21 pm
[...] Carsonified » How to do A/B Testing in WordPress – [...]
Bronson
# July 27, 2009 - 10:41 pm
This stuff is priceless, many thanks for the great tips.
Stumbled!
Brendan Wenzel
# July 28, 2009 - 12:49 am
Thank you so much for sharing this. I have been trying to figure this out for the past few days and this helped me tremendously.
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# July 28, 2009 - 4:01 am
[...] Carsonified » How to do A/B Testing in WordPress [...]
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# July 28, 2009 - 11:36 am
[...] How to do A/B Testing in WordPress | Carsonified [...]
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# July 29, 2009 - 1:34 am
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Michael Kjeldsen
# July 29, 2009 - 1:57 pm
Hi Ryan,
thank you so much for this video, it made me go all-in on testing in WP.
Unfortunately WP (TinyMCE?) keeps removing from the code, even when I have disabled the visual editor. I have to manually edit the post in the database (phpmyadmin) to be able to add the tag.
Did any of you experience this, and i that case: what did you do to prevent it?
Michael Kjeldsen
# July 29, 2009 - 1:58 pm
“… removing from the code” (never mind the gaps in the tag – the comment system removed the tag entirely in the above comment :-)
Michael Kjeldsen
# July 29, 2009 - 1:59 pm
Oh my, your system is teasing med.
In the above two post, guess where to insert [/noscript] :-)
Haris
# July 29, 2009 - 3:37 pm
Right post as right time (atleast for me).
Thanks for the super awesome screencast Ryan.
With the information provided by your blog post and google love, I can easily checkout what variables work and what doesn’t work for my business. :)
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# July 30, 2009 - 3:08 pm
[...] Carsonified » How to do A/B Testing in WordPress – A/B Testing in WordPress [...]
Alex Juel
# July 31, 2009 - 12:24 am
Wow, this was a great post! I’ve actually been meaning to toy around with Google Website Optimizer after I had signed up for it about 3 months ago. I started watching this video and decided that now is as good a time as any and set up a heading test, so thank you very much for the push :)
I had one question. Once it’s set up, can we re-enable the visual editor. Was that only so that we could get the full code instead of what Wordpress shows in the HTML editor?
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# July 31, 2009 - 1:08 am
[...] How to do A/B Testing in WordPress – Carsonified Allt du behöver för att komma igång med a/b-testning i WP. (tags: abtesting wordpress screencast) [...]
Keith McLaughlin
# July 31, 2009 - 3:38 pm
Thanks for the video.
I hadn’t heard of the Website Optimizer service before. Seeing as I also use Wordpress, I think I’ll include a few experiments with my planned redesign.
Thanks again =)
DominixZ
# July 31, 2009 - 5:32 pm
Great Video !!
I know Website Optimizer for a long time but I never know how to use it. Today I know because of you Ryan. Thanks a lot.
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Gavin Steele
# August 3, 2009 - 4:40 pm
That was a great watch! Learnt a lot, thanks.
Are there any security risks?
What security do most people run on WP?
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Stergios
# August 18, 2009 - 12:42 pm
I enjoyed this screencast very much. I found it very educating. I actually had not used Google Website Optimizer but now i am going to use it in future projects. Thank you Ryan. By the way, the music heard at the end of screencast sounds like Stray Cats.
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Joana p.
# September 29, 2009 - 5:03 am
I just love to split test my site’s pages. But having a rough time with some pages in wordpress that require forms.
But thanks anyway for the insights.
Cheers
Joana
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Angelo Cioffari
# November 25, 2009 - 5:27 pm
nice one ryan! thanks for sharing…
Carmen
# December 5, 2009 - 7:03 pm
Great article! I love your video on A/B split testing.
Gary
# December 9, 2009 - 3:53 pm
That’s a really useful video, not just on how to do A/B testing in WordPress, but A/B testing with Google Website Optimizer generally! Thanks.
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# February 16, 2010 - 6:04 pm
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Terry Britton
# February 20, 2010 - 8:59 pm
Kim Roach has been pushing all of us at her membership site to do testing, but I have opted to use Wordpress, so it seemed insurmountable. TILL NOW!!
I’ve shared this with Kim already, and will be doing so in a post to hers and Chris Farrell’s forums next. Thanks so much!
Terry Britton
Professional Copywriter
# March 3, 2010 - 5:03 pm
I love it Ryan!!!! A/B testing is an obsession of mine! and to have a WP plugin as well makes life so easy!
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