What is Google's Website Optimizer?

Google's Website Optimizer is a tool you can use to test your internet marketing strategies. By setting up test page you can compare different layouts to determine which works the best for you.

Here I'll give you a brief overview about how you can use the Website Optimizer to:

-improve conversion rates
-increase your ROI
-test different designs for your website

Here is an example of what your results will look like:

*Image courtesy of Google's Website Optimizer Guide

What are conversion rates?

In order to improve your conversion rate you must first know and understand it. The conversion rate is based upon the percentage of people that visit your site and follow whatever actions you desire. For example, a site selling computers would measure the number of people that visit the site versus the number of people that buy from their site. A conversion rate of 5% means that for every 100 visitors to your site, 5 of them will become buyers. Other actions you may desire to measure could be: signing up for a newsletter, becoming a member, or requesting more information.

Once you have defined what action you want your visitors to take you can measure your conversion rate. Every industry has different averages and most conversion rates are very low. To become profitable you need to reach the point where you're making more money off each visitor than it took to get them there. That is quite a mouthful so let me explain.

If it cost you $1 to get a visitor to you site and they purchase a $10 item, you just made $9. More realistically, if you spent $5000 to get 10,000 people to your site then your goal would be to make at least that $5000 back. You do that by increasing your conversion rate. If your conversion rate was 5% then out of 10,000 visitors you could expect 500 of them to become purchasers. If your average profit per transaction was greater than $10 you just made the $5000 back.

How do you use Website Optimizer?

Using Website Optimizer is fairly straightforward. There are a few steps which may require help from a webmaster but with minimal knowledge of HTML you can do it yourself.

First, there are two different testing methods:

1. A/B testing:
You setup completely different pages and compare which ones perform best. Each page could have different content or a different layout. This is best when you have less than 1000 visitors per week or want to try out different looks for your website.

2. Multivariate testing:
You setup similar pages but want to try several different content changes. This is best when you have over 1000 visitors per week.

Second, after designing and implementing different layouts of your website, you measure the conversion rates of each design and compare them to your original test page.

Third, rinse and repeat! Do it again every once in awhile because people's tastes are always changing and there is always room to improve. There is no formula for a perfect website and people's preferences change over time.

Watch this tutorial to fully understand Google's Website Optimizer.