Optimizely Web Experimentation Resources

Set up Experimentation

Before running experiments, implement Optimizely Web Experimentation on your website. Here are a few articles to help you get started:

• Implement the snippet.
• How the snippet works: Learn about the order of activation.
• Enable cross-origin tracking: Track visitor events across different domains, ports, or security protocols.
• Use Optimizely with single-page applications (SPAs).
• Prepare Optimizely Web Experimentation for your site: Set up the pages, events, and audiences you will reuse when building experiments in Optimizely Web Experimentation.
• Manage users and collaborators: Grant different access levels to your account, projects, and experiments.
• Create and manage your projects and experiments.
• Cookies and local Storage in the Optimizely Web Experimentation snippet: Learn about the first and third-party cookies that Optimizely Web Experimentation ses.

Build Experiments

Once you have implemented Optimizely Web Experimentation on your website, you can start building your experiments. The following links are helpful to get you started:

• Build an experiment in six steps: Create A/B, multivariate, and multi-page experiments.
• Editor and custom code: Use the Visual Editor and custom code to make changes to your site experience.
• Pages: Choose where experiments and campaigns run: Set URL targeting and page-level activation to decide when experiments run and how they activate.
• Events: Track visitor behaviors: Track clicks, pageviews, and custom events like revenue to measure how visitors engage with your site.
• Metrics: Measure the difference in visitor behavior: Metrics are based on events, which track visitor actions.
• Audiences: Choose which visitors to include: Show your experiment to specific groups of visitors.
• Redirect experiments: Compare two separate URLs, like two homepages, as variations in an A/B test.
• Use Optimizely with single page applications (SPAs). Design and run experiments on SPAs like React and Vue sites.
• Extensions and reusable templates: Reusable templates help you add custom features to your site—like carousels, banners, and lightboxes—without involving a developer every time.

Ideas to help you get started:

• 10 common experiments and how to build them
• Testing ideas for E-commerce and retail sites
• Testing ideas for lead generation
• Testing ideas for media and publishing sites
• Testing ideas for travel and hospitality sites
• The Big Book of Experimentation Case Studies

QA and Troubleshoot

Before deploying your experiment, Optimizely Web Experimentation recommends that you thoroughly QA your experiment. More information on how to QA and troubleshooting can be found in the following links:

• QA your experiment with the Preview Tool: Use the Optimizely Web Experimentation Preview Tool to check that variations, audiences, and events look and work the way you'd like.
• Advanced QA: Check how events fire, verify that the snippet is up-to-date, identify whether you've qualified for an audience, and more.

Turn results into action

Once you have run your experiment and gathered some results, it is time to turn them into actions. For more information on how to interpret your results and how to share them with your team, refer to the following links:

• The Results page: See the impact of your changes on key metrics.
• Segment your results: Filter your results by groups of visitors for a more granular view.
• How long to run an experiment: Decide when to pause or stop an experiment.
• Interpret your results: Take a long view of your experiment data and learn from your visitors.
• Take action based on results: Build on winning variations, learn from losing ones, and iterate on inconclusive experiments.
• Share your results with stakeholders

Grow your optimization program:

Check out the Optimization Methodology to learn more about building an impactful optimization program.