Sometimes, we want to change how a web page looks to see if it works better. We also wonder if it's better to send people to a special page instead of the main one.
If you're thinking about these things, you might want to do a URL Redirect Test.
This test helps you find out which page might be the best performing page.
In this article, we will guide you step by step on how to start a URL Redirect Test with ABConvert.
Step 1: Create a new url redirect test
Navigate to create new test page by clicking "Create New Test" in the menu.
Click "Create URL Redirect Test"
Step 2: Set trigger condition(s)
In the Create URL Test page, you can fill in basic information, such as Test name, description.
Then, you will see a session like the below screenshot.
In the screenshot, you will notice there is a section called "Trigger Condition".
This section is for you to set the conditions and rules, that will trigger url redirect.
The logic is quite simple, it functions like this:
If any condition meets, do redirect.
And the redirect url will depends on your settings.
In each condition, you can have different rules, and for each rule, you can define how the rule will consider to be satisfied.
For example, you only want to trigger redirect on Facebook traffic, then you can set up a rule like if query string contains ?utm_source=facebook, then trigger redirect.
Including or not including the "?" in input of the Query string is both acceptable in "Matches Exactly", "Contains", "Doest not match exactly" and "Does not contain" . It will all be parsed when evaluate the redirect condition.
For Regex condition, it will have to be a valid regular expression.
Or you can just simply set up page url for redirect.
For example, direct all the traffic to home page to either home page and collection page.
So you just have to set up the trigger for home page.
Since the redirect will only happen when the trigger condition is met, so if you want to test two page and you want your customer to see either one of the page. You might need to set trigger condition for both URL.
Once, you set up the trigger condition, you can then go set up URL and the traffic percentage.
Trigger once & Always trigger
Some user might be curious about the difference between Always trigger and Trigger only once option.
The default of the URL redirect settings is Always trigger, that means as long as visitor meet the condition, our app will redirect the visitor no matter how many time the visitor visits your webpage.
This is good for some use case that you only want to show visitor either one of two pages, or many pages.
But for those user who want to just take the effect of different landing pages, this might be problematic.
Therefore, we have another option Trigger only once.
This option will only redirect the visitor once throughout the purchase journey. Once the order has been made, the option will reset itself and trigger the visitor again if the visitor ever meet the trigger condition again.
Step 3: Preview & Check analytics
After the test is created, you will be navigated to our dashboard.
Click into the test, you will see the analytics page.
Click the "Summary" button, you can will see quick summary for the test. You can preview each page by clicking preview link.
You can also use incognito to visit different url to see the effect.
In the analytics, you can check metric like conversion rate, and staying time. It will give you a sense on how your page performs.
How the analytics is recorded
We record analytics based on unique visitors. When a visitor triggered redirect condition, we will record a visitor event, and record which experiment is associated with the redirect test.
Then, through the visitor journey, the add to cart event, checkout event, and order event will be attributed to the experiment.
Once the visitor make the purchase, the calculation will reset. Otherwise, even though the user come back to complete a order, it's still count as a unique visitor. So does add to cart, checkout, and order event.
Each purchase can only have 1 of each event.
As for staying time, once the visitor is redirected to the page, we will start counting the time, and adjust the time will scroll and stall time. When a user leave the page, our script will record how long the user stay in the page.
In our analytics, we remove the outlier of the staying time so you can observe the more accurate data about your page performance.
Conclusion
This article explains how to start a URL Redirect Test with ABConvert.
If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to email support@abconvert or reach out through the support widget.
Happy testing 🎉.