How to implement A/B testing (split testing) in Expressionengine

Question

I was advised on Twitter to post this here for others who might be looking for the same answers I was.

The client wanted to test the user engagement of an auto-play video vs. image slides with a call-to-action. I chose A/B testing over Multivariate testing, because I only needed to switch out one section of my page. I couldn't find many articles or any answers on how to implement dynamic-content split testing with a module or add-on, so I started looking into other non-dynamic options.

Since I am not using Structure in this current project, I had found this helpful article, but couldn't implement it the way the article explained: FortySevenMedia Blog

I was told to look into Google Content Experiments, which looked amazing, but I didn't want to deal with multiple pages/urls, despite that looking like the easiest solution, so had to find something else to use instead. Overview of Content Experiments

Answer 1

I decided upon using Optimizely, which is not the perfect solution since you can't use dynamic content, but since the client only wanted to change out 1 section of the homepage, I decided this was the best solution for what they wanted. You don't even need an account to test it out on your site, just visit their Homepage and enter your site url to try out how everything works and what you have control over with their code editor (which is actually so much more than I was expecting).

You can choose what page section you want to split-test and create variations, or even just change out the text/color of a button or heading to test user engagement and click-throughs.

Answer 2

The basic implementation of Google Analytics Experiments with redirects is awful IMO. Each version requires its own URL? No thank you!

BUT there are also implementation methods that do not require redirects with both client side and server side code.

I've not tried the server side option but the no-redirect javascript one is much cleaner than the basic one that they lay out.

I like having all my analytics data in one place which was a big plus for Google Experiments. I did not extensively evaluate Optimizely.