Today is a huge day for the Google Analytics suite! Google Optimize joins Google Analytics, Data Studio and Google Tag Manager as a free offering now available in over 180 countries!
With Optimize and Optimize 360 both exiting beta status, Google is ready to enable all business to have access to enterprise A/B testing and personalization. We at Analytics Pros have been using and writing about Optimize for over a year! We have a preview of the Optimize 360 version, a get started guide for Optimize, and instructions for deploying Optimize through Google Tag Manager if required.
As you get started with Optimize, we wanted to share our best practices for getting the most out of your tests. Here are our recommendations:
- Do not deploy Optimize in Google Tag Manager.
- Yes you can, but hardcoding provides the highest performance!
- If your website contains dynamic pages or is a single page app use activation events
- Use the page hiding snippet to prevent flicker
- Make sure you control permissions to prevent people from launching tests, who should not be
- Read up on how the Visual Editor makes changes
- Learn why Google Analytics and Optimize data will not exactly match
- When launching a test, use Real-Time to validate proper deployment
- Need testing ideas? Google has a ton!
- Want to know everything? FAQ is a great must-read!
Our favorite feature by-far of Google Optimize, is the native integration with Google Analytics for analysis and insights. No longer are you limited by just analyzing against a small set of metrics, instead you have access to every interaction your users perform! Only with Optimize can you natively measure the full impact of every experiment you run.