How to split organic traffic for A/B testing

[Jseddon92]

This might be a silly questions as I may be missing something completely obvious here, but we are completely new to A/B testing. Our site doesn't receive a phenomenal amount of traffic although we are looking to set up some A/B testing for our popular products. Is there a way to split organic traffic for a specific product page. I'm aware that we need to experiment which one performs better in Analytics but I'm unsure how to redirect 50% of the organic traffic.

[Jseddon92]

Thanks Chad that really helps, I came across the experiment tool previously but wasn't aware this was for A/B testing. Cheers

[ChadC]

With in Google Analytics you can use Google Experiments to set up a test. (It is located under the Behavior list option on the left hand side.) The interface will walk you thorough setting up your test. It will ask you the % of your traffic you want to include in your test, what goal you are measuring, what confidence level you want to achieve, how long you want to run the test, and it will also ask for your control page URL and your Experiment Page URLs. It will then provide some code for you to add to your page. This code will split your traffic although it's not necessarily going to be a 50/50 split. Google periodically analyze which page is reaching your Goal and will adjust the percentage of traffic that is being sent in order to favor the page that is winning. Once the Experiment runs its course you should have some good data to help optimize your pages.   This link will walk you through everything. Good Luck!!

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi Joshua

Google actually offers a Website Optimizer service. You can read more about that here.

You can also look into services such as Visual Website Optimizer, Optimizely, and also Hotjar. All offer great tools and features that can get you up and running fast. Also, they all offer good resources and ideas to help you think of different tests to try.

Hope this helps! Good luck!