A/B Testing with Google Analytic Custom Variables

Question

I'm trying to do some AB testing. In particular, I want to use Google Analytics (GA) custom variables to track which variant a user saw, so I want 3 levels; one level to specify the category of testing (image, popup, etc.), then the page they're on, and the value is whether they saw variant A or variant B.

Looking at custom variables, it seems that _setCustomVar only takes two attributes; a key and a value. How would I go about doing this?

Note: I want to avoid using the GA Multivariate testing module which redirects the user.

Why don't you use as PopUpA, PopUpB, ImageA, ImageB then you can decrase the count of level you need. — Ibrahim Ozturkcan, Feb 12 '14 at 22:07
Have you looked into Content Experiments? https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1745147?hl=en — Linda Lawton - DaImTo, Feb 13 '14 at 07:35
Side note: remember setCustomVar is classic analytics not universal analytics make sure you know which one your running. I use event logging to do something similar. — Linda Lawton - DaImTo, Feb 13 '14 at 07:38
@DalmTo I mentioned the GA variate testing module as the one I don't want to use (as I want to avoid having users redirected). — Ford, Feb 13 '14 at 15:13

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 12 '14 at 23:36

2

hkpeprah, I think you should be fine with CustomVars as one of the attributes is already available to you -- page dimension.

If you set CustomVar on session or visitor scope, you will have the values for a given test available for all the hits that get sent during a visit (including all the events and e-commerce transactions).

Still I would suggest testing only one page so that you can be sure what changes actually caused any lift/drop in conversion rate. Running multiple test at the same time is not the best way to go (unless you can segment traffic so there is no overlaps, of course).

Hope this helps.

answered Feb 12 '14 at 23:36

Petr Havlik

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Setting the `customVar` indeed worked. I used custom reports to segment the data based on page/variable set. I also ended up switching to Universal Analytics and used custom dimensions which worked even better. Thanks for the help! – Ford Feb 25 '14 at 17:49
Splendid, glad I could help. – Petr Havlik Feb 26 '14 at 09:03

A/B Testing with Google Analytic Custom Variables

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