How to A/B test without Google Optimize

With the advent of Google Analytics 4 on close on the horizon, Google also made another significant product announcement recently; which is that Google Optimize will also be departing from their platform list. Presumably this is related to the fast paced switchover to Google Analytics 4, but the official line is that they can’t provide the capabilities that a lot of users what from an AB testing tool. This did seem like a strange reason, as myself and many others have used Google Optimize for years with great effect, sure it might not have the power of Adobe Target or Optimizely, but it was a great starting point for conversion rate optimisation and testing, with lots of handy features (the most obvious one being the Google Analytics integration which made it easy to review results and determine winners.)

Option 1: Pay for an enterprise level A/B testing tool

There are several enterprise level tools for testing, such as Optimizely, Adobe Test & Target, and to a lesser extent VWO.

These tools tend to be powerful and allow easy access WYSIWYG editing experiences, but also the option to employ JavaScript to further alter a page if the WYSYWIG editor isn’t up to the job.

Unfortunately, with them being enterprise tools they tend to be expensive. This makes it hard to dip your toe into the testing water, and means that they should probably only be a consideration if you have been testing with the free version of Google Optimize and want to push onwards with your testing plan.

Option 2: Use your CMS to personalise content

If you are using a CMS such as WordPress, or even better a newer headless CMS, you may have the option to create personalised experiences on your website.

From this point, you will most likely need to integrate your data with Google Analytics or another dataset / source that you can use to measure the effectiveness of your changes.

If you can’t integrate with an analytics platform, then you may be able to extract data from your CMS / website and determine which users converted and which version of the content they saw.

Happy testing!