Behavioral segmentation in Google Website Optimizer when doing a/b split testing or multivariate testing? What’s that? Let’s start with segmentation. What is segmentation? Segmentation or “advanced segmentation” as it’s called in Google Analytics, allows you to choose what types of visits you want to be considered when generating the data for a report.

You can segment your data and see the conversions and the goals by segments like:

• your brand keyword
• the best performing keyword
• source (where your visitors came from and contribution of that source to your overall goals and conversion rates
• segment visitors by how many products they purchased
• page depth (how many pages they visited) prior purchase or achieving your conversion goal
• campaign (how offline or online campaign contributed to your conversion goals)
• etc……

A similar principle then applies to segmentation when doing a/b split testing using Google Website Optimizer. You segment what type of visitor will be run through the test and who won’t. In order to do so you will need a plug-in for GWO from btbucket.com.

BTBuckets is a free tool that allows you to create tests for specific user segments, different target markets. Users who reached your site through an organic branded keyword search are different from users that clicked on a banner. With this plug-in you will be able show your test pages only for selected segments (visitors), you would like to test on like for example:

• only visitors from social media
• only visitors from search engines
• only new visitors
• only returning visitors, etc… ( you can create your own segments as well)
• visitors from different countries

With BTBuckets you can:

• Create different content for different users
• Give special promotions for specific type of users
• Optimize your conversions
• Deliver a more relevant and better ads

NOTE: I haven’t tried it myself yet on a full scale, so don’t know what limitations there are. Apart from that you can create an account for 1 website only, or if there are some issues when using it, etc. If you have tried it please leave us comments below.