You’ve likely heard of A/B and multivariate testing. There is another way to test your web pages now, courtesy of Google Analytics. But in case you aren’t familiar with the two recognized ways to test pages, I’ll give you a brief explanation.
- A/B testing – A/B testing is a way to test two different versions of the same web page. The two pages can be completely different or they could be nearly the same with a single element that is different. A/B testing works well when you change a single element on the page and test that element against an alternative.
- Multivariate testing – Multivariate testing allows you to test multiple variables on the same web page. For instance, you want to test the headline, the placement of an image, and the layout of your content section. You can create your web page with two versions of each of these elements and test them to see which version of each element results in more positive results.
- Content Experiments – Content Experiments is a new feature within Google Analytics that allows you test up to five full versions of the same web page. It’s a good alternative to multivariate testing. Suppose you want to test five different versions of your headline. You can do that with Content Experiments. No need to run five separate A/B tests. Then you can pit five versions of your layout against each other. See which one leads to more positive results.
Web page testing is a very important part of the website development process. Now you can do it with Google Analytics.
