A/B Testing Implementation

July 26, 2007 9:11 AM

Web Development Question: A/B Testing - does anyone have a really good resource on the mechanics of setting up a/b testing for web sites?

I'm talking the nitty-gritty programming details (PHP etc) on things like how best to exclude search engine agents, best practices on setting cookies, etc. I've seen lots of stuff on need, analysis and interpretation of results, but my google-fu is failing me on the implementation side.

posted by Zinger to computers & internet (4 comments total)

i know excluding Google isn't that hard all you need to use is a robots.txt
posted by DJWeezy at 9:15 AM on July 26, 2007

If you really are stuck where to start, I'd recommend Google's Web Site Optimizer.

Not perfect, but works pretty slickly for what it does do. Much better than starting from scratch.
posted by Ookseer at 11:05 AM on July 26, 2007

CrazyEgg is a great tool for A/B testing.

But I'm not sure whether that's what you're seeking. "[H]ow best to exclude search engine agents, best practices on setting cookies" aren't normally topics of A/B testing. Could you elaborate on what you need?
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 11:32 AM on July 26, 2007

What I need is more information on how to route traffic to my test pages, how to make sure if they come back to the site they see the same test page they saw on their first visit, etc.

We have a web analytics system in place (not google), but the knowledge base and documentation provides scant information about the actual setting up of the test.

Does that clarify?
posted by Zinger at 3:53 PM on July 27, 2007