A/B Testing

Freeheelvrmnt

Hi -

I'd like to do some A/B testing on my SmugMug site to see if one design works better than another. I'd like to do this on individual pages. I was going to use Google Analytics Experiments to do this, but it would require a piece of JavaScript on the page.

Since that's not supported, does anyone have any recommendations on how to run this test? I suppose I could create a page on another domain that randomly selects one of the pages and redirects the visitor. Any downsides to that approach?

Thanks!
-Ben

leftquark

That sounds like it could work. When you say "if one design works better than another." What exactly do you mean? Are you trying to see which one sells more prints? Which one looks better for customers? I'm trying to get at: how are you going to get users to give you the data you're looking for?

Freeheelvrmnt

leftquark wrote: »

That sounds like it could work. When you say "if one design works better than another." What exactly do you mean? Are you trying to see which one sells more prints? Which one looks better for customers? I'm trying to get at: how are you going to get users to give you the data you're looking for?

It would depend on the page, but my primary metric would be inquiries. Standard A/B testing would change something like the wording on the "Contact Me" button so that you had a few variations. You present 50% of the visitors with one version and 50% with the challenge version. After a period of time, measure which version of the page gets people to open the contact form (and hopefully submit it) most.

I could see doing this on some of my sporting event pages, too. The goal there would be increasing sales. So position/size/visibility of shopping buttons, gallery styles, additional text, etc. would be candidates for testing.

It would be great if I could just use the Google Experiments right on the page. I don't suppose there's been any thought of extending some custom JavaScript to pro customers? It would be great if you could apply/remove it from the back end so that any scripts with conflicts could be toggled off fairly easy.

Thanks!
-Ben

leftquark

Freeheelvrmnt wrote: »

It would be great if I could just use the Google Experiments right on the page. I don't suppose there's been any thought of extending some custom JavaScript to pro customers? It would be great if you could apply/remove it from the back end so that any scripts with conflicts could be toggled off fairly easy.

We hadn't considered this however I'd certainly be curious to the results of the experiements. I'm always curious what would help my visitors and drive sales.

This would be a good suggestion to add to our Feature Request page: http://feedback.smugmug.com!