10. What are the advantages of STA over Google Website Optimizer?
Answer: Google has a multi-variate testing tool that's pretty good for small tests. When they first launched it in late 2006, we worried a bit, and thought, "Oh great, now we're competing with Google, and they're giving their tool away for free."
But after using their tool, we realized that GWO is not really a split test "ACCELERATOR." It's actually pretty slow if you follow their instructions (slower than A/B split testing in some cases).
You can make it a little faster if you know what you're doing.
But you've got to realize that Google will be using your tests to collect data for their own purposes.
As far as they're concerned, the MORE data they can collect per test, the better!
As far as you're concerned, the LESS data it takes to improve your landing pages the better.
If you're on a tight budget, using GWO is better than not testing at all -- by far. In fact, if you're not testing at all, and you're not ready to purchase STA, I would encourage you to start running tests with GWO. However, STA really is a big step up. Here's why:
- Of the 6 multiple variable test designs included with STA (it comes with 6 single variable designs, too), Google's Website Optimizer (GWO), can really only handle one of these well.
- Even on the one small test GWO can handle, if you follow Google's instructions, it will take you over 20 times longer to finish your test than it will with STA.
- If you want to simulate using STA's biggest test with GWO, it will take you over 100,000 times longer to run this test if you follow their instructions, and you have to break your single test into 3 separate tests.
- Many hours after setting up a test on GWO, you will probably go to check your stats, and you'll get this message: "No data has been collected yet. Please wait a day or so in order to start seeing results." Google holds YOUR data for up to 24 hours. STA, on the other hand, gives you REAL TIME REPORTS.
- If you want to optimize multiple things on your page (sales, opt-ins, and visits to the FAQ page, for instance), GWO says you can do this, but they lump all the conversions together, and you can't separate them out. STA allows you to optimize multiple outcomes on the same page, and keep everything separate.
- GWO does not allow you to test an element at different locations on the page. Let's say you want to see whether your testimonials work better at the bottom of the page, or at the top. You can't test this with GWO. With STA this is simple.
- GWO does not allow you to have a factor that spans multiple pages, or even multiple places within a page. All factors must occupy contiguous regions in your HTML. With a little minor customization (discussed in the STA forum), you can test non-contiguous factors with STA. This is important. Let's say you want to test your price, but you mention your price halfway up the page, and at the order button. You just couldn't do this with GWO, unless you had no other factors you wanted to test in between.
- GWO forces your "landing page" to be just one URL. STA allows you to have a landing page that spans multiple URLs. For instance, if you check out the current sales page for STA:
http://www.splittestaccelerator.com/index.php
you'll se that it spans 4 pages.
GWO would allow me to test factors from only one of the pages per test. STA, on the other hand, allows me to treat all 4 pages as a single landing page, and I can put items from any of the four pages in the test.
You might not use this feature, but if you need to, it's very nice to have.
- As far as I know, GWO doesn't allow you to filter out junk traffic, such as spiders, bots and traffic from "hits" sites "log spammers" and porn sites. I'm guessing GWO does filter out some bots automatically, but not the other traffic, and it doesn't give you control over which traffic is excluded and which isn't (again, as far as I know). STA gives you complete control over this. You can exclude visits from your test based on ip address, user agent and domain. Most of the main spiders and bots come pre-excluded. And you can add new exclusions with a push of a button, and even "clean up" your test data after the fact. (Excluded traffic gets served the control page).
- With STA you retain complete control over your data. No one else gets to use your data to serve their own purposes.
- Google gives you just one main report. STA comes pre-loaded with 5 different reports, and lets you drill down on a visitor by visitor basis if you want. You can probably set up similar reports if you tie GWO in with Google Analytics, but it will take some doing.