Blogs are so last decade

I recently did some redesign work for an SEO client’s website in an effort to increase conversions. There’s no point in guessing on these things when we can test. 

So I turn to Google Website Optimizer (GWO) to setup a simple A/B split test between the old home page and the new one. 

In a typical, really simple A/B test you set three values:

1.) The original page URL

2.) The new page URL

3.) The url of the page that is loaded when a conversion is successful. 

For my client the original page was his current home page.

The new page was the redesigned one we created and uploaded to his site with a different name than the original homepage. 

The conversion page was his store. We have “order here” buttons on the home page of both variations and we want to know which design performs the task of getting customers to the store via these buttons better.

Sounds simple right? One problem.

The clients store is at a different domain name than their website and GWO won’t let you set use a different domain name in any of the fields for testing. HRMMMM… What to do?

Here’s how I got around the problem. 

First, I created a page on the clients main domain (an asp page in this case, windows hosting, ick). This page does one thing. It 301 redirects to the real conversion page. 

I then put the tracking code on the real conversion page. Tested it an all was kosher. All other parts are identical to GWO’s default directions. 

It took me a little bit to get that figured out. Hopefully it helps someone else with the same issue. 

Thanks for listening,

Toby