What is Google Optimize?

Google Optimize is an online split-testing tool from Google that plugs into your website and enables you to experiment with different ways of delivering your content. It facilitates three types of testing – A/B testing, multivariate testing, and redirect tests. Optimize is typically used for conversion rate optimization (CRO).

How does Google Optimize work?

There are two key elements to Google Optimize:

• An Editor, which lets you create altered versions of your pages, to test different HTML content options against one another (e.g. in Version A, the web page shows a green CTA button; in Version B, the same button is yellow). The Editor works with a range of device type views, including mobile.
• A Reporting suite, which uses data from your linked Google Analytics account to provide insight into the experiments you set up using the Editor. The Editor is where you can see, for example, whether Version A or Version B got the best click-through rate.

The Editor and Reporting suite are used together to setup and analyze experiments into what works best on your web page.

What’s the point of using Google Optimize?

Using Google Optimize to achieve a higher conversion rate can increase the average value of visits to your web page.

Put it this way: if 10,000 people visit your web page per month, and 2% of those people convert at a conversion value of £10 each, those visitors will bring in a total of £2,000, at an average value of £0.20 each.

But, if you can use Google Optimize to improve that page’s conversion rate to 3%, those 10,000 visitors will then be worth £0.30 each and will bring in a total of £3,000. By increasing the conversion rate by 1%, we’ve gained an extra £1,000 per month in revenue without needing to increase our marketing costs.

Invest time and effort into Conversion Rate Optimisation

We are big fans of Conversion rate optimization. Every time an experiment on Google Optimize helps you improve a page’s conversion rate, the average value of your acquisitions goes up. While we should obviously point out that other page optimization tools are available and do a great job, they often come with a monthly subscription fee and won’t necessarily integrate as seamlessly with Google Analytics or offer the full feature set provided by Optimizer. Whatever tool you choose to help hone your website experience, the great thing about conversion rate improvements is that they will continue to show a return on the time you invested in the improvement for as many months as the page you have optimises is up and running. Also, work done on improving your conversion rate will help to show an increased ROI across all your activities and channels. Once you have optimised and enhanced your key pages, you can far more confidently invest in paid search and social campaigns to attract much larger audiences for your optimised content.

How to get Google Optimize

You can sign up the free version of Google Optimize here.

There’s also an enterprise version of the tool – Google Optimize 360 – which carries a subscription fee. However, we recommend sticking to the free version while you’re getting started.

Optimize is currently available in 37 languages, which makes it an ideal choice if you’re collaborating on your CRO experiments with colleagues around the world.