Awesome

#DEPRECATED Google has shutdown the Web Optimizer service and migrated all it's functionality and probably more to Google Analytics.

More up-to-date documentation and examples on http://blackjid.github.com/gwohelper

Google Web Optimizer Multi Experiment Helper

I wrote this helper to create multiple experiments with GWO in my startup voxound.com, I hope you can use it too.

Description

This helper allow you to load dynamically the control script and the tracking script provided by GWO, as well to push the tracking beacon for the start of the experiment and for the goal.

It also provides a way to make changes to the page based on the experiments variantions delivered by GWO. This can be done using CSS or javascript.

Setup

Insert the following snippet in your page and modifie de values for your needs. You can use it at the begining or end of your code depending when your are going to call the methods

    <script>
    GWO_helper.account = "UA-XXXXXXX-X";
    GWO_helper.debug = true; /* or false */
    GWO_helper.init([
            {id:"xxxxxxxxxx", name:"download", track:false},
            {id:"xxxxxxxxxx", name:"fork", track:false} /* n experiments */
        ],
        function(){/*callback code*/});                    
    </script>
    <script src="gwohelper.js"/>

GWO_helper.account string
This is the google web optimizer account ID your are going to use. i.e "UA-XXXXXXX-X"

GWO_helper.debug bool
If it's true, the script will write some logs in the browsers console and it will not send the tracking beacons

GWO_helper.init(experiments) experimentDef
This is the initialization method. You pass an array with as many object as experiments you want to test

experimentDef
id Is the ID that GWO provide for this experiment (Step 9 in the GWO interface step by step guide)
name This is a name you need to assign to the experiment.
track Whether the experiment should start tracking automatically or you are going to start it manually

Dealing with GWO interface to create the variations

This is a step by step guide to create the experiments in the GWO website

Go to Google Web Optimizer website
Select the account that your are going to use
Create a new experiment
Select a Multivariate Experiment
Check the I've completed the steps above and.... checkbox and click Create
Name your experiment
Add your url in the "Test page URL" and in the "Conversion page URL", none of these urls are going to be used so you can put whatever you want. Click "Continue"
Select You will install and validate the JavaScripts Tags then click Continue
In the Control and Tracking script text area, find the experiment ID and use it in the experiment definitions in the gwo_helper.js file
Create a file with the experiment sections definitions. You'll need to write one line for each section. Use the same name that you defined in the experiments definitions in the gwo_helper.js file It should read like this:
```
    
    
```
Click in the link Test page not accessible? Try offline validation, then select to browse the Test Page location and select the file you created in the step 10. It will return a few errors but it should detect the 2 sections you defined. Click continue in the window.
Click Contiune. Don't worry for all those errors.
Confirm clicking in Contiune Anyway"
Now you can create as many variations you want for each sections. Give them a name and you can leave the content empty. Then click on Save and Continue
Launch the experiment. You can launch the experiment with the debug property in gwo_helper set to true. This way your are not going to send any data until you change it to false in your production environment

Tracking the test and the goals

The script will add to GWO_helper.experiments an object for each experiment you defined in the setup. These objects have two methods to help you track your experiments and a few properties.

###experiment.start()### This method start the tracking for this experiment. GWO will count this visit for the experiment statistics This method is called automatically if the flag track is set to TRUE in the experiment definitions passed to the init method

Example:

GWO_helper.experiments.experiment1.start();

###experiment.goal()### This method will tell GWO that this visit convert for this experiment.

Example:

GWO_helper.experiments.experiment1.goal();

Example

Try this live example