Creating a Multivariate Target Page

The target page is the Web page you want your visitors to view. It contains the Multivariate Target Wizard. Visitors arrive here by clicking links on the experiment page.

To create the target page:

1. Create or edit the PageBuilder page with the target content. See Also: Creating Web Pages with PageBuilder.
2. Note and record the ID of the content number on this page. (For example: 948.) This ID number is used later.
3. Place the Multivariate Target widget anywhere on the page.

   Whether you arrive at the target page by browsing to the variations page first or by browsing to the target page directly, the views are counted with the following exceptions:

   • if you are logged in
   • if you have not first visited the experiment page to receive the cookie
   • if you have cleared the cookies before visiting the target page

   NOTE: Users that are logged in are counted as a page view of the experiment page but not counted on the target page as a conversion.

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4. Publish this page

After creating the Target Page, create the Multivariate Experiment Page.

Creating a Multivariate Experiment Page

The Experiment page contains:

• the Experiment widget
• the Section widget(s)
• the content variations

The following illustration shows the basic steps to create an experiment page with Multivariate Test widgets.

To create a multivariate experiment page:

1. Create or edit the PageBuilder page you want to use during the experiment. For more information about PageBuilder, see Creating Web Pages with PageBuilder.
2. Place the Multivariate Experiment widget in any location on your Web page. Multivariate Test widgets do not appear on a Web page when you are not logged in; only the content shows. The following information appears:
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   • Target—This is the content ID of the target page. To help find the content, browse the content folders by clicking Browse (...).
   • Conversions—This is the number of conversions any variations must have before the experiment is automatically stopped. For example, 1000 tells the experiment to automatically end when one variation has reached 1000 conversions.

     NOTE: During an experiment, you can choose a specific variation to be the page that all visitors see and end the experiment.

     The experiment widget also shows reports to indicate how each variation has performed during the experiment.

3. Place at least 1 Multivariate Section widget into the location where your content variations should appear. By using a variety of content combinations, the experiment tests the best arrangement of content to accomplish the desired conversion goals. You can use 1 or more Section widgets per PageBuilder page.
4. Drag any type of content widget into the Multivariate Section widget. These produce the variations used during the experiment.
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5. Configure the content widget with the appropriate settings. (You can use any widget inside the Multivariate Section widget. The Content widget was chosen for the purposes of this example.)
6. Add another variation by clicking Add Variations () and repeat steps 4 and 5. You now have variation 2 of 2.
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   Use the slider control to select each specific content used in the variations. The following sample Web pages show the slider control for variation 1/2 and 2/2.

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7. If you want to add another section and variations, go back to step 3 and continue. The following image shows a completed experiment page that has 2 Section widgets.
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8. Publish the PageBuilder page. Now you are ready to run the experiment.

Testing Combinations of Content

You can create a PageBuilder page with more than one Section widget. This provides greater flexibility in helping to identify combinations of content and images that provide the best conversion results.

The following image shows a page containing 2 Multivariate Section widgets.

The contents inside the Section widgets are part of the variations shown randomly during the experiment.

The number of variations in a Multivariate Experiment grows exponentially as you add sections and variations.

For example, if you have 2 sections with 3 variations in each section, there are a total of 8 (2³) pages to be tested. If you increase this to 4 variations each, there are 16 (2⁴) pages.

Viewing Reports During an Experiment

Click Show Reports to see the experiment’s progress. The reports shows:

• the percentage of conversions compared to visits
• the number of conversions
• the total number of visits to each variation

The bar graph shows the conversion percentage.

The numbers to the right of the bar graph show 2 values. The first value is the percent of conversions compared to the total number of visits to the experiment page. On variation #2 above, the “79%” means that 568 visitors to this variation have successfully reached the target page 451 times.

The numbers after the percentage show the actual conversations. The first number before the forward slash (/) indicates the total number of conversions during the experiment. The second number is the total number of times this variation was viewed by a visitor. Users that are logged in are counted as a page view to the experiment page but not counted on the target page as a conversion.

The following list describes how to use each button.

• Preview—Shows the page configurations for this specific variation. Notice that not only does the content in the Multivariate Section wizards change, but also the slider number changes too.
• Variation Enabled—When this appears, this variation is currently selected to run. Click this button to disable this variation.
• Variation Disabled—When this appears, this variation is currently not selected to run. Click this button to enable the variation.
• Promote—Click this button to promotes this specific variation to become the actual page seen by visitors. All other variations are disabled and the experiment is ended.

Enabling or Disabling a Variation

At any time during the experiment, you can disable any variation. Do this by clicking Enable () which currently shows the variation is enabled. The variation then becomes disabled and cannot be viewed by site visitors.

When a variation is disabled, visitors who have seen this page no longer see it but see another variation instead.

You can re-enable a variation by pressing Stop (), which currently shows the variation as disabled. The variation then becomes enabled and visitors can view it.

Scheduling an Experiment

The PageBuilder page has the same properties as other content types, including the Schedule Property. To set the beginning and ending date of the page, edit the PageBuilder page and follow the procedure for setting content schedules as described in Scheduling Content.

Be sure to set the Schedule End Date to be long enough past the time you believe the experiment will automatically end.

Stopping an Experiment

At any time during the experiment, click Stop on the Experiment widget. This suspends the experiment. Counters stop incrementing, even though visitors continue to see the page variations.

While the experiment is stopped, cookies are neither set nor read. For more information about cookies, see When an experiment is running, visitors see a randomly-chosen page variation. When visitors view the experiment page, a cookie is set in the browser. This cookie indicates the specific variation seen by the visitor. From this point forward, if they next visit the target page, this cookie is read and the proper variation counter is increased. The visitor continues to see this variation until the experiment is ended.. When you stop an experiment, the Multivariate Section widget remains on the experiment page.

You can restart the experiment by pressing Start. Counters are reset to 0 and restarted.

When one variation reaches the target number of conversions, it automatically becomes the page variation that all visitors see; the other variations are disabled.

You can stop the experiment by promoting a specific variation. When you click Promote (), the selected variation becomes the page variation all visitors see; the other variations are disabled.

When the experiment automatically or manually ends, the Multivariate Section widget is removed from the experiment page.

Repeating an Experiment

To repeat an experiment after it has ended, you first must restore the history of this page. To restore history of a PageBuilder page, follow the steps in Restoring a Previous Version.

After you restore the previous version, you can edit the parameters of the experiment, modify the content, and run the experiment again.

Testing a Target Page Outside of You Website

When your target page is outside of your website, you must create an intermediate page that contains the Target widget, and redirect the visitor to the outside address.

For example, to test visitors from your page to http://www.NFL.com:

1. Create a new PageBuilder page.
2. Add the target widget to it.
3. Add the code that will redirect the visitor from this page to www.NFL.com.
4. Create content with links to the target page you just created.

When the experiment is running, the experiment page links the visitor to this intermediate page and the conversion is counted. Then, the redirect takes the visitor to the external page.