[Ben]

I'm still tinkering with this in my spare time, the google side setup is easy, but getting the validation part to work is proving tricky.
I can get control and section script parts to work fine, but the tracking codes won't validate. I can get it to validate the code on our order complete page by saving a static html file and uploading it but I can't figure a way of putting the tracking code into our home page without it appearing on all our pages.

It would be great to get some guidance from Volusion on this as I think Website optimiser could be a huge help to all of us.

[carsonreinke]

Ben-

Here is an example: http://www.redhatsandmore.com/. The two home page banners are setup in a Multivariate test. In order to validate, you need to validate with HTML files, rather then having Google Website Optimizer try and check it for you. To do this, go to the site and save the Test page as HTML. For the conversion page, go to the "ROI_Javascripts" and click view article page, then save that as an HTML file (not logged into the Admin). You can then use those to files to validate and starting running the experiment.

[Ben]

Thanks Carson, your help is very much appreciated.
I'll have another go at getting this working next week and if all goes well I'll try and post a step by step 'how to'.

[Ben]

I got Google website optimiser working on our homepage today, so I thought I'd write a quick post explaining what I did.

First though, a big thanks to Carson for all the help, much appreciated.

This is how I set up a *multivariate* test on our homepage welcome text:

Set up a Google website optimiser account and create a new experiment
Select multivariate test, then choose your homepage as the test page and the goal page as your order finished page
Put the Control Script at the top of article 2, and put the section scripts around your existing article 2 content.
Put the tracking Script at the bottom of article 71
Put the conversion tracking script in article 134 - Note- when I put the conversion tracking script in to article 134, for some reason the code was malformed when the page loaded. I fixed it by copying the script into notepad, turning off word wrap and putting the whole script on one line then copying it back into article 134.


Now you need to validate the pages, the live validation wont work, so go to each page, view the source code, copy it into notepad and save it as an html file, then choose the upload option to validate.

Once you're at this stage the rest is easy, you just create alternative versions of your article 2, these can be different text, images etc or anything else you like.
Google's instructions are very simple to follow, the only tough part is validating the code.

michaelene - I'll have a go at an AB test sometime, but I'm sure it can be done, I expect you'll need to put the code in the "category description" and "category description below products" fields of your categories, put the conversion script in article 134 as above. I guess you'll probably have to validate manually too.


I'll post back in a while once I have some results to share

[rgacom120]

would like to hear how well this helps with conversions, I am trying a/b test but dosen't seem to work...I want to see which product display method works the best for customers.

The Multivariate Experiment Works?

[carsonreinke]

Multivariate does work. There is probably some limitations on what can be done with the product detail.

[Ben]

When you say A/B testing doesn't work, what do you mean exactly? can you verify the javascript on your original page?