A/B Tests with Google Optimize

by Lars Miller | Aug 9, 2022

At Syrup, we’re continually looking for ways to improve our clients’ goals. One way we can do that with a web property is to increase conversion rates, typically on a form or a button. And the best way to increase those conversion rates is to continually perform A/B tests to find what your audience prefers.

I’m going to take you through a basic example of what an A/B test might look like. If, for example, we wanted to increase conversions on our contact form of those interested in Marketing Services, a good place to test improvements could be the Marketing Services page. Halfway down the page, we have a button that goes to the contact page. The text of this button is “Grow Your Business.”

If we wanted to see if changing this button text to “Talk to Jason about Marketing Services” would increase conversion rates on the contact form, we can run a test through Google Optimize. Google Optimize allows us to:

• Create an altered version of the page
• Split traffic to the page
• Tie this test to Google Analytics goals

Create alternate version of the page

Optimize opens the page in question in its own editor, allowing you to make edits to a page. When you save, those changes are not saved to your website, but are saved in Optimize.

Split traffic

When doing any test, you want a control and a variable. Optimize allows us to do this, even having multi variables. For this example, we’ll stick to a simple 50/50 split. This means that when you, as a visitor, visit this page for the first time, you have a 50% chance of seeing our control version, and a 50% chance of seeing our test version.

Google Analytics goals

Now, in Optimize, I can link it to our Google Analytics account and pull in a list of Goals we’ve already set up and are tracking. Once I select the appropriate goal (Contact), optimize will start collecting data to determine a winner. Once we have a winner, typically after a month or two, we stop the test and implement the winner onto the website as a permanent edit.

You should always be A/B testing on your website to find what works best, ultimately helping to increase conversions.