Google Optimize is a free Google Analytics 360 testing platform, with which you can create experiments and A/B tests, to improve the conversion rate [CRO] of your website.
Optimization is directly related to conversion. Google Optimize is the ideal platform to test different versions of elements and designs of your website and, depending on the results, design your website to improve the conversion of your goals.
This platform is the evolution of the Google Analytics experiments, which were found within the Behavior reports and which were more complex to create and more limited in functionality.
What is Google Optimize and how does it work?
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Google Optimize is a tool that connects with your website and allows you to create experiments and A/B tests of the different elements of your website. You can play with different formats and designs, without the need to duplicate your page. You will be able to test and measure the performance of each one of them, according to the behavior of the users who visit your website.
The platform allows the optimization of your landing pages, and the correction of usability, and web architecture. It helps you improve user interaction with forms, content, downloads, calls to action, improve conversion landings, etc.
Google Optimize gives you immediate results from your experiments, to measure which version works best. It integrates perfectly with other Google 360 applications and allows you to evaluate your marketing campaigns from multiple platforms.
How to install and activate Google Optimize step by step
To install Google Optimize, you will need to take a few previous steps:
- Create a Google Analytics account
- Use the Google Chrome browser
- Create a Google Tag Manager account
- Create a Google Optimize account
- Install the Optimize Google Chrome extension on your computer
You can activate Google Optimize in two ways: with HTML Code or through Google Tag Manager.
1. Install Google Optimize with HTML Code
You can install it by adding an Optimize HTML snippet, which is an extra line added to Analytics that loads the Optimize container on the right sidebar, by clicking Install Optimize :
2. Install Google Optimize with Google Tag Manager
It is also recommended to install Google Optimize, once you have installed and activated Google Tag Manager. You just have to take into account that your version of Analytics and Tag Manager are compatible (if they are recent accounts, they usually should be).
This will allow you to sync all three apps: Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and Google Optimize. This way you will be able to make a more precise measurement, adding tags and triggers from Google Tag Manager, which will expand the measurement possibilities of your experiments and A/B Tests with Google Optimize.
Previously you will have to link Google Tag Manager with Google Analytics. You will see that it is very easy: you just have to add a tag in Tag Manager with Google Analytics, choose to create a new tag and choose the one from Universal Analytics. This tag is preconfigured in your Tag Manager container.
Once the tag is created inside your Tag Manager container, copy and paste the Analytics Tracking ID (UA) and activate it as a Page View. This will record all the visits that your website has on both platforms.
Once you’ve linked Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, you’ll need to create a new tag in Tag Manager that includes your Google Optimize ID number (starts with GTM). Activate it, sequencing it after Google Analytics, so that the visits and behavior of your users are recorded on both platforms and thus be able to measure the results more accurately.
How to verify the installation of Google Optimize
Once Google Optimize is installed in either of the two ways (you must choose only one), the platform offers you a verification and agreement graph.
So you can start performing and measuring your tests and experiments. The tool checks all the steps and indicates if any of them do not work, so you can correct them.
I present this tutorial on how to install Google Optimize, so you can do it through Google Tag Manager:
Advantages of creating experiments with Google Optimize
There are many advantages that Google Optimize has in terms of its use, its integration with Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and other Google 360 platforms. You can create experiments with different versions of your website, without having to create replicas of your landing pages and get immediate results.
These are other advantages :
Google Optimize is a free and easy-to-use tool
In addition to being a free tool, Google Optimize has an interface very similar to all Google Analytics 360 applications, making it very intuitive and easy to use. If you already know Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager, you will be able to handle it very easily.
Integration with Google Analytics
It integrates perfectly with Google Analytics, with which you can create tests and measure the micro and macro objectives that you have created in Google Analytics and measure the results (in the Behavior Reports > Experiments section).
Real-time analytics with Google Optimize
Google Optimize offers you analytics and behavior reports from minute 1 of the start of the experiment. With which you can see the daily evolution of each of the experiments and which one works best according to the dates or days of the week.
Timing and hypotheses
Google Optimize allows you to synchronize several tests and create hypotheses for your experiments to have a better follow-up of the results and the evolution of the experiments.
You can run multiple experiments at once with Optimize
Although the technical term is A/B testing, you can create versions A, B, C, D, etc; of your experiments and divide the traffic into equal percentages or customize them, if you want to give some more relevant than others. You can combine and do more than 100 experiments at the same time with a single account and see the performance of each one of them.
Google Optimize allows you to test all the elements of your website
You can do experiments and different versions with each of the elements of your website: titles, images, text, buttons, forms, call to action, etc. Even change the order, color, or size of each of them to see and measure the behavior of users who visit your website.
Users only see one version of each experiment in Optimize
A great advantage is that when you create an experiment, and it has several versions of the design, color, size, etc., users who visit your website only see one version of the element in question, so it is not surprising to see changes in the design. , format, image, or content.
As long as the user does not delete the cookies, Google Optimize will continue to show the version of the experiment that he saw on his first visit.
Experiments and A/B tests with Google Optimize with all subdomains of your website
It allows you to intervene and easily vary not only the home page but also each of the domains and subdomains of your website, landing pages, landing pages of your organic or paid campaigns, etc.
Google Optimize results in graphs and reports
The campaign to work is to sponsor creative and in return results reports offer you different metrics and graphs that allow you to see and evaluate your experiments from various perspectives.
Types of tests you can perform with Google Optimize
Google Optimize offers you several types of experiments that you can customize, design, and adapt to the needs and objectives of your brand or your website.
These are the 4 main types of experiments you can create:
Tests or A/B tests
Also called A/B/n Test, A/B Test is the most common experiment you can create with Google Optimize. It consists of creating one or more variants of a single element of your website: a button, a title, an image, a phrase, the color or the copy of a call to action, etc; in different versions.
Although it is called A/B testing, you can create numerous variables and see which of them works best for user interaction. In the different variables, you can make as many changes as you want and version B can be different from version A.
Tests or Multivariable tests or TMV
The Multivariable Tests (TMV), offer you the possibility of carrying out tests with changes in different elements of the web at the same time. You can drastically change the design, the location of the elements, the order, the color, the text, the typography, etc. in each version.
The test identifies the most effective variants and combinations of each element. In this way, you will be able to see which ones work best about the interactions and conversions made by users in the different versions of your website
Redirect tests or tests
Redirect tests, also known as URL split tests, are very similar to A/B tests but with landing pages, which you can edit and design very differently.
In these tests, variants are identified by the destination URL and allow you to see which design performs best
Test or customization tests (currently in the Beta phase)
Personalization tests are the latest update to Google Optimize. They are sets of changes that you can make to your website but aim at a specific group of visitors who meet certain requirements.
Unlike experiments, you can implement customizations permanently and without the variables option.
Personalizations are a unique set of changes that are shown to users who meet certain segmentation conditions, for example by geographic location, by type of traffic, that users from Google Adwords ads see a version of the web different from traffic organic, etc
