All You Need to Know About Google Optimize and Optimize 360

Want to boost conversions on your website? Then find out what works best for your target audience. One common method to do so is A/B Testing. Regardless of your organization’s budget, you can start testing with Google Optimize.

Google Optimize is a free testing tool that can natively integrate with Google Analytics. It allows you to run a variety of tests that range from simple A/B Testing to complex multivariate testing.

Also, you can go a step ahead and use Optimize 360, a supercharged paid version of Google Optimize. It is a part of Google Marketing Platform and offers expanded testing capabilities with more personalization options.

The list below describes the differences between Google Optimize and Optimize 360:

Source: Optimize Vs Optimize 360

Ways to test inside Google Optimize:

There are multiple experiment types that can be conducted in Google Optimize to fit all of your testing needs. Some of them include:

• A/B Testing: This is a random experiment conducted using two variants of one web page (A&B versions), where A is the original version and B is the modified version. Both versions have slight differences or in some cases, they can be entirely different from each other. Optimize measures the performance data for both versions and identifies which one delivers better results.
• Multivariate Testing: With this feature, you can reach your desired goals by testing multiple elements on a page to find out the best combination. Also, with Optimize 360, enterprises can test more element combinations as compared to the free version.
• Redirect Testing: Also known as split URL test, this allows you to test separate pages and check their performance against each other. The key difference here is that instead of being identified by page elements, the variants are identified by a URL. It is most useful when testing different landing pages or evaluating a page redesign.

Note: With Optimize 360, you can carry out around 100 experiments at any given time. It is possible to test just about anything on your website with improved efficiency.

Linking Optimize with Google Analytics:

The Optimize testing data can be accessed in Google Analytics. You can see the Optimize data in Google Analytics by clicking on ‘Reports’ in the information panel.

Benefits of Optimize 360:

• Scalability: With Optimize 360 you can run more than 100 experiments at a time making it suitable for enterprise-level organizations.
• More Objectives: More objectives allow you to find more ways to measure success. While the free version allows you to test for 3 objectives at once, Optimize 360 can run up to 10 objectives at the same time.
• Complex Multivariate Testing: You can run multiple variants of two or more elements at the same time to find the best outcome. It can provide up to 36 combinations during large scale testing.
• Audience Segmentation: With Optimize 360 you will be able to target experiments through audience segmentation. This powerful feature is not available in the free version.

Let us take a look at a use case where A/B testing using Google Optimize helped in determining the better approach by evaluating the conversion rate:

As you can see

• Two variants for interest list were created.
• The first variant was the original version and the second variant consisted of a blue background on the interest form.
• The performance for both was measured over a period of one month.

In the end, the blue background layout showed some massive improvement and had a 94% probability to be the better version. A total of 172 conversions took place on the blue background layout as compared to the 138 conversions on the original layout.

To Wrap Up:

In case you are a small or medium organization, Google Optimize (Free Version) is the right choice for you. You can try it and experiment until you master it.

For enterprise-level organizations, Optimize 360 is the best way to go and the investment spent on upgrading will be worth it.