Overview
A/B Testing is the most essential tool marketers can use to target visitors by testing their responses to varying content. This article introduces Solodev users to Experiments. Experiments allows users to test different iterations of content on different pages and track the iterations receiving the most conversions and engagement.
With Solodev Experiments, users can experiment with different pieces of content on a page, the copy on a page, images on page, different hero iterations, and sliders. This article shows the user how to create and modify experiments and their entries.
Note: Prior to conducting experiments in Solodev, users should arrange the different iterations to be tested. Given that visitors can see the different iterations of content on the website, Solodev recommends ensuring that the correct iterations are tested. Content cannot be a page itself, but a file in the web files directory with an .HTML or .TPL extension.
Step 1 – Add an Experiment
Open the web files -> content -> experiments directory.
Click Add Experiment to bring up the Add Experiment window.
Enter the Name.
Click Submit.
Note: Name and describe your experiments so that at first glance, collaborators know the intent of the experiment, in this case, the intent is to see which performs better, a static hero image or a hero slider.
Step 2 – Add an entry to an Experiment
Click on the beaker icon next to the experiment name to open the experiment.
Add content to the experiment by clicking the Browse button.
Select home-slider.tpl (Solodev’s slider), located in the web files -> content -> home directory, for the first iteration of the experiment and click Choose.
The first iteration of the experiment is displayed to the left of the Browse button.
To configure the content, enter the name adjust the frequency, and click the checkbox located under the Active column.
Click Save.
Scroll to the right and click the orange + button to populate a new row.
Follow the steps 1 – 6 to add the second iteration. For this iteration, select home-video.tpl located in the web files -> content -> home directory.
Step 3 – Adding an experiment to a page
Open the page that will contain the experiment and select the dropzone for the experiment.
Select the experiment from the web files directory and click Publish.
Note: 50% of site visitors will see the Video iteration of the homepage and the remainder will see the Hero Slider iteration.
Step 4 – Modifying an experiment
Users can gain insight into the success of their content while running experiments. Solodev Experiments allows users to capitalize on those insights and modify experiments. Users can change the frequency of the iterations in an experiment, disable an iteration in the experiment or add further iterations to an experiment.
Step 4a – Changing the frequency of iterations in an experiment
If an iteration in an experiment does not perform well, users may want to increase the frequency to gain more data. Alternatively, users may want to decrease the frequency or remove the iteration altogether in which that content is displayed.
Open the experiment to display the iterations.
Adjust the frequency sliders.
Click Save.
Note: As you can see above, the slider entry has a higher conversion rate than the video entry does. We'll increase the frequency of the slider and decrease the frequency of the video.
Step 4b – Removing iterations/entries from an experiment
Open the experiment to display the iterations.
Scroll to the right and click the grey – button.
Click Save.
Step 4c – Adding iterations
In the previous example, this document guided the user through creating an experiment with two iterations. Suppose that the user would like to test more than one slider and more than one video image. In this case, the user can add content to the web files folder to add further iterations to the experiment.
Open the experiment to display the iterations.
Click the orange + button on the far right of the Slider to add a new row.
Click Browse, select the desired content from the file tree, and click Choose.
Enter the name of the frequency, click the checkbox in the Active column and adjust the frequency slider.
Click Save to save the iteration.
Step 4d – Disabling an iteration
Open the experiment to display the iterations.
Click the checkbox to remove the check mark from the Active column.
Click Save.
Step 5 – Deleting an Experiment
Open the folder containing the experiment.
Select the checkbox next to the experiment.
Click Delete to bring up the modal window.
Review the warning and click Submit.
Note: While Solodev Experiments tracks conversion rates locally, users can send conversion data to google optimize, which is integrated with google analytics, for granular tracking. To leverage Google Optimize, create a new experiment that mimics the variations configured in Solodev and place the Google Optimize key in the Google Experiment ID field.
