A quick overview
If you're not familiar, Google Adwords A/B testing is the process of trying out two different page layouts, to see which of the two work better towards your stated goal. If you're trying to sell a product, you can test which product description and call to action works better. If you're trying to get users to sign up to your newsletter, then you can try out different ways of prompting people to do this.
At a simple level, it involves adding Analytics scripts into certain pages of your site, so that Google can incorporate tracking of the performance of two different landing pages for the one ad. You can then see which of the ads convert better.
Here's what you need to follow this article:
- a copy of notepad open to copy and paste Urls into
- your Adwords account open
- a page you're already using for your conversion process
- your website open and logged in as an administrator
Step by Step process for doing A/B Adwords Testing in a DotNetNuke site
In your Google Adwords account, click on 'Website Optimizer'.
Choose 'A/B' Experiment as the one you'd like to use. You will see the 'A/B Experiment Checklist'.
'A/B Experiment Checklist'
1. Choose the page you would like to test
2. Create alternative versions of your test page - the 'B' page
3. Identify your conversion page
Choose the page you would like to test
This just means selecting a page in your website you'd like to try an alternative for. Navigate to the page on your site,
and copy down the Url. In my case, the url is http://www.ifinity.com.au/Products/Tagger_Tag_Cloud_For_DNN/
Creating an alternative 'B' page to test Marketing Copy
To have an alternative landing page for your Ad, create a new page in your DNN site. Give it a new name, fill in the title and description. The good thing is, you don't have to be SEO minded, just concentrate on getting the right sales copy to convince your visitor that going on to the next step in your process is the logical thing to do.
Copy in the alternative content, and copy down the Url that the new page is created under. In my case, it's http://www.ifinity.com.au/Products/Tagger_Module/. You also have the option of using the 'copy existing modules' functionality from your DNN control panel, which will allow you to copy the contents of an existing page. This will make it easier to create alternate content with a few key variations. To do this, go to your new page (you may have to copy/paste the url you copied down earlier, because it won't show up in the menu now). Expand your Control panel, then select 'Add Existing Module'. The top left drop down box will change to a list of pages on your site, so select the 'A' version of the page. You can then choose any modules that contain content you'd like to copy to your 'B' page. Click on the 'Add' button, and the module is copied across.
If you're using a Google Analytics module or script injection, don't forget to make sure it is copied across to your new page as well.
Your 'B' page is ready to go! Remember to copy down the new Url in your open copy of notepad, so you don't have to go looking for the page again (because it's not in the menu of your site)
Identify a conversion page.
In most cases, your conversion page will be somewhere you want the users to go. You should ideally have this setup and tracking conversions already. This might be a 'thanks' page after they have signed up for a trial, newsletter, downloaded a key file or purchased a product. If you're using Adwords, you should already be using conversion pages or you're not really optimising things enough. Google makes enough money as it is - you don't need to contribute to their free staff lunches by throwing money away on non-converting keywords.
All we need to do here is copy/paste the Url of our conversion page into our notepad file. In my case the Url is http://www.ifinity.com.au/Downloaded/Product/iFinity.Tagger/
Back to Google Adwords
You can now tick the 'I've completed the steps above and I"m ready to start setting up my experiment' and click 'Continue'
'A/B Experiment Set-up'
Name your experiment : this is a field so you can refer back to your different A/B tests. I'm calling mine 'Tagger Alternative Test #1'.
Identify the pages you want to test : Here's where you need your copied down urls. In the 'original' box, copy and paste your 'A' page Url. In the 'variation' box, copy and paste your 'B' url.
Conversion Page Url : copy and paste the Url for your conversion page.
After you've pasted in the three urls, you're done with this page : click 'Continue'.
'Install and Validate Javascript Tags'
The next page has all sorts of scary javascript warnings in it. Be brave and select 'I will install and validate the Javascript tags'. Then click continue.
You will see a page with 4 boxes of javascript code. You'll be doing your 'A' page first. Go to your website and navigate to your 'A' page, then click on 'settings'. Expand the 'Advanced Settings' section, and copy and paste the control script code from the Google page into the 'Page Header Tags' box. Click on 'Update' for your page.
Now you're going to add a new Html/Text module to your page. In the DNN control panel, select 'Text/Html' as a module type, and type in 'tracking script' as the module title. Select the lowest content pane available in your DNN skin (for me, it's 'Bottom Pane') and then click 'add'. You should then get a 'Text/Html' module on the bottom of your page, with the usual 'Edit Text' link. Click on that 'Edit Text' (or select 'Edit Text' from the module control drop down list)
Once you are in the editing screen for the tracking script module, click on the 'source' button in the text editor to switch to html view. You'll see a <p>Add Content...</p> tag - delete this so you have an empty box. Now copy and paste the code from the Google page which says 'Add the tracking script to your original page'. Click on 'update' when you are done.
But we're not finished yet - because the text/html module looks ugly on our page. For the 'tracking script' module, click on the module settings icon, (or select 'SEttings' from the drop down list). This should open up the module settings page.
Expand the 'Page Settings' section, and select the following options:
Visibility : none
Display Container : Unchecked
Allow Print : Unchecked
Allow Syndicate : Unchecked
Module Container : <Not Specified>
Cache Time : 0
Click on update.
Setting up the variation page.
Now, you have to setup the code on your variation 'B' page.
What we are going to do is copy the tracking script from our original page to our variation page. Yes, Google shows two different boxes on their screen, but in fact they are the same page. We're going to achieve this by copying the tracking code module from the 'A' page to the 'B' page.
Navigate to your 'B' page in your website (either by copy/paste the Url you've saved, or go to Admin->Pages, select the page and click on the 'View' icon).
When you're on the 'B' page, in the DNN control panel, select 'Add Existing Module'. In the 'Page' dropdown, select your 'A' page, then, in the 'Module' drop down, select 'tracking script'. Select 'BottomPane' (or the lowest pane) and click 'Add'. This will add the tracking script module to your 'B' page, and in doing so, inserts the tracking javascript for you.
Setting up the Conversion Page
Now navigate to your Conversion page. We're going to repeat the process we did to set up the tracking module.
So, repeating the instructions:
In the DNN control panel, select 'Text/Html' as a module type, and type in 'conversion script' as the module title. Select the lowest content pane available in your DNN skin (for me, it's 'Bottom Pane') and then click 'add'. You should then get a 'Text/Html' module on the bottom of your page, with the usual 'Edit Text' link. Click on that 'Edit Text' (or select 'Edit Text' from the module control drop down list)
Once you have the text editor up, click on the 'Source' button to view the Html source. Delete all the existing code in the Html code box. Then, copy and paste from the Google page for the 'conversion page: add tracking script' section into the Html box. Then click on 'Update'.
For the 'conversion script' module, click on the module settings icon, (or select 'Settings' from the drop down list). This should open up the module settings page.
Expand the 'Page Settings' section, and select the following options:
Visibility : none
Display Container : Unchecked
Allow Print : Unchecked
Allow Syndicate : Unchecked
Module Container : <Not Specified>
Cache Time : 0
Click on update.
You're all done with the Javascript. Click on the 'Validate Pages' to check you've done it correctly. You should get three green ticks. If you don't, you've probably made a copy/paste error, so look at the affected page and try and work out which bit of javascript is wrong.
Click on 'Continue' when you've got your three green ticks and are right to go.
If you're feeling apprehensive, by all means take Google's advice and click on the 'Preview Experiment' button. Check to make sure you don't have bits of script showing up in your website copy, and that the layout looks OK. You can close the Preview browser window when you're done.
Then, take a deep breath and click on 'Start Experiment'. Your experiment will start working and you can check the reports after a couple of hours, or a couple of days, depending on how much traffic you get.
Going Forwards
Personally, I would never let Google do any Adwords optimisation for me. There are options in Adwords to turn on optimisation. This will do things like increase exposure for Ads that have the best conversion rate. While this sounds like a good idea, it's only a good idea if you've got your conversion page optimised to something that will make money - like a page sale page or something. A lot of people put in conversions as trial downloads, newsletter signups, or something else. These rough conversions are good for tracking changes in results based on effort, but aren't necessarily good for optimising revenue. For instance, if one set of ads optimises the number of people who download a trial, but the majority of those customers turn out to not need/like/want the product, then you've optimised for the wrong set of people. And Google will gleefully show the wrong ad to the people, because what you're really optimising is their revenue, not yours. So, like anything with Adwords, proceed slowly, set low limits and experiment until you have a winning formula!