Google Website Optimizer, the multivariate testing suite offered with AdWords, has a few little used or known tricks which a practical analyst might find useful. One which I will discuss here is the ability to manipulate the ‘Goal’ script to prevent overloading conversion goal pages with multiple scripts. Its a really simple fix, and a simple and practical idea for running many tests simultaneously, without creating statistical overlap or technical issues for your most important pages.

After recently completing work on a major MVT undertaking of Global Elements on the CableOrganizer.com site, Paul, Juan and myself had built up a significant cache of tests which we wanted to launch right away. Everyday in our morning web initiatives meeting we found ourselves getting anxious to get on new things right away. Juan was looking to put some of our button calls-to-action to the test as well as our process to the cart. Paul wanted to run a follow-up on the headlines portions of our previous test. I got shivers thinking of how much fun its going to be to test a static old version of a major problem page versus a long-researched strategy to implement our targeted content provided by in-house design and the SiteBrand solution.

PROBLEM: Four tests with the same conversion goal running simultaneously.

SOLUTION: Run test with same goal and a single script alluding to several test designations.

Say your site (or client’s site) is based on a conversion objective of online sales. This means that you probably have a shopping cart solution. Most solutions provide a way to manipulate the code as it is presented in HTML by the server scripting. This means that you’d have to potentially put 1 full script for each multivariate test running to identify a goal based on that objective. However, all parts of the script are not necessary to identify as a goal appropriate to a page individually.

Check it out: Here is a screenshot of all our tests currently running using ‘Add to Cart’ as a conversion goal (for reasons we will explain some other time).

All of the tests above are running on one script with 9 different goal codes referred to in the test provided designation function. Implemented in the appropriate place, your script should take on an appearance similar to this:

The victory here is in the ability to not worry about script-heavy pages essential to conversion (i.e. shopping cart). Added benefits are that the script can be altered or exchanged to meet the needs of the test. Instead of adding 9 lines of code, you can get away with 1. Quick, simple and effective from that point on.

If anyone has any interest in, or problems with this, feel free to write me an email or comment here on thoughts.