Reinvent your website with Google Optimize

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AB testing

Google Optimize, what is it?

Google Optimize is an A/B testing tool, i.e. a testing tool used to assess how a change on your website – for example, a change in the colour of a button or a title heading – affects your goals (form completion, online orders, decrease in bounce rate, etc.).

In the picture here below, you can see an example of A/B testing for the Wikipedia website. By changing the colour of the “Learn More” button from blue to green, Wikipedia went from a click-through rate of 52% to 72%.

That’s a 20% increase with just a colour change!

Improve the conversion rate of your website by testing which model suits you best!
AB testing concept

 

The importance of A/B testing is clear to see and should not be ignored. As a matter of fact, it can directly help you to improve your conversion rate, as well as your revenue.

Until recently, this type of test was very expensive and often involved expert developers. Those days are over. Now, thanks to Google Optimize, it’s possible to quickly test what impact a visual or textual change on your website will have on your click-through or conversion rate.

Before explaining why you should try Google Optimize and how it works, we invite you to read about another interesting case study, where Google Optimize has also led to a significant increase in conversion rate on the investment specialist website fool.com. In this case, the conversion rate increased by 26% after only 33 days of Google Optimize testing (full case study available here).

Why should you use Google Optimize?

If you are still not convinced, here are some situations in which Google Optimize will make your life easier:

  • You would like to generate more conversions and therefore more revenue on your website
  • You would like to reduce your bounce rate, and increase the number of page views and the average duration of sessions.
  • Your online marketing campaigns are too expensive, and you’ve noticed that it is mostly due to the quality of your landing page.

These situations are common, but it is now possible to solve these problems without spending a fortune.

We suggest you check out how Google Optimize works below, because as well as being useful, it is also relatively easy to use!

How does Google Optimize actually work?

First of all, you need to add a piece of code on your website. You will then have to set ip the the link with your Google Analytics account. Once both these things done, you will have access to all (or almost all) Google Optimize functions. Now you can start to create experiments, including variations of your current website.Test which design converts best thanks to Google Optimize while resting your decision on tangible & reliable data!

In each of these variations, you can change one or more components. You may then indicate to Google how to spread the web traffic across the different versions. Google Optimize will simply act as a Dispatcher. In other words, it will distribute your visitors to the different variations of your site and examine how they behave.

From a technical point of view, making a change in Google Optimize is rather simple: you only have to click on a component (the title, for example) and edit it.

Some of you will have already noticed that Google Optimize actually uses a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor to design your tests, meaning that once saved, the changes that you have made and you see will take effect immediately on your variation. However, it is always possible to go back to the original version of your website.

Google Optimize is a WYSIWYG tool. You may directly see how the changes you are operating in Optimize are affecting the design of your website.

Once your variations have been configured and your changes finalised, you are ready to define your test period as well as your objectives. In this regard, there is a difference between the free version of Google Optimize and the paid version. The free version of Google Optimize only lets you use pre-defined objectives. Namely, the three main axes are the bounce rate, the session duration and the number of pages viewed per session.

The paid version on the other hand (Google Optimize 360) allows you go further by using your own objectives.

It’s worth pointing out that from a statistical point of view, the probability that your users will buy your product/service usually increases when your users:

  • stay longer on your site;
  • they visit a greater number of pages.

Therefore the free version of Google Optimize is certainly not useless! Moreover, if you do online advertising, improving your landing page may help you:

  • reduce your cost per click;
  • increase your ranking in Google’s search results.

Once your test has been finalised, Google Optimize generates a report by highlighting the variation which has generated the best results as displayed in the screenshot here below.

Screenshot of a Google Optimize report. You may directly measure which design converts best.

 

Now, you simply have to launch your “winning” version and watch your objectives improve over the days/weeks that follow.

Pretty cool, don’t you think?

Are you intrigued by the many opportunities Google Optimize has to offer? Willing to have it implemented by experts? Get in touch with us and together, let’s boost your business!

In the meantime, should you have a remark or a question, do not hesitate to comment!