Author Archives: MacPrawn

Google Analytics Content Experiments

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It is now much easier to do your own A/B tests. In fact you should be able to set them up yourself without having to rely on us to do the installation. Knowing what to test is obviously another question altogether and there is still some tagging involved, but you basically just have to follow the instructions in the new Content Experiments wizard in Google Analytics.

Here are the specific details if you use our Google Analytics tracking solution:

  1. Make sure you have the latest tracking code on your site. You can compare what you have on your site with //www.monitus.net/index.php/account/tracking-code.html.
  2. Only A/B testing is currently supported, not multivariate. I don’t know when multivariate will be added back, so for the time being we can’t do experiments that apply to the whole site or experiments that run on the checkout pages.
  3. You obviously have to create a variation or B page in the store editor or in your web hosting environment. Just make sure that the B page also has the Monitus tracking codes on it.
  4. That’s it! Just follow the wizard in the Contents Experiments:

Step 1 – Choose experiment pages

Note: You can create several variation pages, but as mentioned above make sure that the variation page(s) have the Monitus tracking codes on them.

Step 2 – Set experiment options

Content Experiments works with Google Analytics goals. If you don’t have any goals please create at least one. Tip: you may already have a Sale goal, but I highly recommend an Add to cart goal. It’s not always possible to tie the performance of a landing page directly to sales. That’s why I like mini goals such as Add to carts. See here about setting up an Add to Cart goal in Google Analytics

Step 3 – Add and check experiment code

Here is the only small change to the instructions. You have to add the following code right before the Content Experiments code inside the Head Tag on the original page:

<script type="text/javascript">_uhash="off";monitus_set_cookie("_mgwo_page", "x", "/", "auto", "1");</script>

Once you have done that your original page should have the following structure:

The parts in green are your standard Monitus tracking code installation. The part in yellow is the code from the Content Experiments wizard and the part in purple is the additional code required for Content Experiments and Monitus. Please note that the static file in green at the top has to be before the experiment code.

Validation Step

Because you are using Monitus tags you will get a validation error. No problem – just click the link to skip validation.

Step 4 – Review experiment

Just hit Run Experiment on the next step to start it! There is no special tagging required for the B page(s) or the goal page.

Missing Conversions in Google Analytics

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On Thursday June 14th, we proceeded with a hardware configuration change that, regrettably, ended-up degrading our service. This was particularly evident in Google Analytics, where you might notice missing transactions. We sincerely apologize for this, and have reverted the hardware back to its previous configuration as soon as we were made aware of the problem, early this morning. We are closely monitoring the situation, but it does seem to have completely resolved the issue. We will issue an update when we have truly confirmed things are back to normal.

We are looking into what caused this disruption, especially since this hardware modification should have improved the service, not deteriorated it. Rest assured that we will get to the bottom of this, and will learn from this to install new processes to prevent this form happening, or at least be warned faster. We are always dedicated to offering you the best service possible, and this hardware modification was another step in that direction, that backfired. But our commitment to you stays the same, and we will find new ways to make your Monitus.net service better and faster.

Update (1:00 PM PDT)

The problem indeed seems to be resolved. We will keep monitoring over the week-end, and post a final update next Monday – but things definitely look back on track. Thank you for your patience.

Update (June 18th, 6:30AM PDT)

The issue is now confirmed as resolved. The data form Friday through Sunday looks back to normal. Thank you for your patience.

Hardware Maintenance

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This morning (March 20th) our hosting provider required to move some of our servers to new hardware, as a normal, preventive move. This can have caused some of our scripts to respond slowly, or not at all in some cases. But the failures were very few, and very short lived. All our systems are now back to normal. We apologize for the trouble, an unfortunate but unavoidable situation on 24/7 systems like ours. We have kept failures to the very minimum, and will do so on any future such incidents. Thank you.

Temporary network failure

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Our network service provider had a major network glitch this morning, rendering our servers inaccessible for about 5-10 minutes. We deeply apologize for the inconvenience, and are in talk with them to see how we can be better prepared for failures like this in the future. Note that since the monitus code is loaded asynchronously on your store, your pages still would have loaded normally, although in some browsers, the “loading wheel” indicator might have kept spinning. But the page’s content would have loaded fine, and other scripts would have run. The impact will be in your data (Google Analytics, Transaction Assist report, etc…) where you will be missing those 5-10 minutes’ worth of data.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.