Create multi-page (funnel) tests in Optimizely Web Experimentation

  • Updated
  • Optimizely Web Experimentation
  • Optimizely Performance Edge

Optimizely Web Experimentation and Optimizely Performance Edge let you test a hypothesis that affects more than one page on your site. While traditional A/B tests usually test a single page, multi-page (funnel) experiments let you test multiple pages or every page on your site.

Maybe your hypothesis is that your conversion rate will improve by reducing the amount of text throughout your site. Make sure your visitors are not switching back and forth between pages with vastly different amounts of text: if a visitor starts with a page that has less text, they should only see pages with less text for the duration of their visit.

In a multi-page experiment, visitors who saw the original version of page 1 see the original version of page 2, while visitors who saw Variation 1 of page 1 see Variation 1 of page 2. This approach is helpful for funnel testing.

You can build multi-page experiments as part of your standard workflow by adding more pages to your campaign. No limit exists to how many pages you can add to a campaign.

You also have two ways to create a multi-page experiment: from the Experiments dashboard or directly in the Visual Editor.

From the Experiments dashboard

  1. Go to Experiments and click on your experiment.
  2. Go to Targeting and use URL Targeting to specify a single URL or pattern of URLs.
  3. Click Save as Page.
  4. Click Create New Page and repeat the process to add more. 
  5. Click Save to save your changes or Revert to undo your changes.
  6. Go to Variations > Add Variation and type in the name of your variation. Repeat this step until you add the variations you need.
  7. Select the Variation or click Edit to open the Visual Editor.
  8. Select the first page to change from the drop-down list of URLs.

From the Visual Editor

You can add pages to a variation to create a multi-page experiment from the Visual Editor.

  1. Go to Experiments and select your experiment.
  2. Go to Variations and select the variation.
  3. Click the URL drop-down list and select Edit Targeting. A list of pages that are currently part of the variation appears.
  4. Click Create New Page to add another.

  5. Repeat this for each page you want to add to the variation.

You can also add an existing page to your variation by selecting it from the list under Browse for Pages. This can be useful for adding a page you created a page after you created this variation.

When you add the necessary pages to your variation, you can edit them in the Visual Editor and launch your experiment.