One of the most requested features by users of Nelio A/B Testing since we launched the first version, back in 2014, is the ability to segment visitors. When you start an A/B test, you only want it to be seen by a certain group of visitors of your website with common characteristics: being from a specific country, coming from another specific website, etc. This is the meaning of segmentation.
The versions prior to 5.0 of Nelio A/B Testing were built on a codebase that, although it has given us many joys all this time, needed a total renovation and modernization. Finally this year we were able to launch version 5.0 of Nelio A/B Testing, created from the scratch and with a much more modern, extensible, and easy to maintain codebase.
This has allowed us to add new functionalities to Nelio A/B Testing, such as revamped heatmaps, which are one of the jewels in the crown of our WordPress plugin.
And today I’m pleased to announce that segmentation is now a reality in Nelio A/B Testing. This new functionality that we have recently launched for our users of the premium version of Nelio A/B Testing includes the following rules to segment visitors:
- URL parameter: target visitors who come to your page under test with a specific parameter in the URL that you can specify.
- URL referrer: URL from which visitors come to your page under test.
- Language: it is obtained from the configuration of the browser of the visitor who reaches the page under test.
- Location: target visitors from a specific location. It is deduced from the visitor’s IP.
- User registration: indicator that WordPress gives us to know if the visitor is a registered user on the web or not. This is especially useful to filter registered users from the test so that they do not participate or generate results.
- Day of the week: so that only visitors who access the page under test on certain specific days participate in the test.
- Time of the day: so that only visitors who access the page under test in a specific time frame participate in the test.
- Browser: target visitors who use certain browsers.
- Operating system: so that only visitors who use a certain operating system participate in the test.
- Device type: allows us to filter users who access the web with a mobile, tablet, desktop computer, or smart TV.
- Window width: so that only visitors who have a browser window with a certain width (or a range of widths) participate in the test.
- Cookie: to filter users who have (or do not have) a certain cookie with a certain value.
- IP address: to filter users by their IP.
As you see, we have added many interesting and complementary segmentation rules in Nelio A/B Testing. With them we can create very flexible and diverse user segments. Let’s now see how to use segmentation with Nelio A/B Testing.
Nelio A/B Testing
I was very impressed by the quality of this plugin, how easy it was to set up, and the outstanding support Nelio provides. I highly recommend Nelio A/B Testing.
Josette Millar
How to create segments in Nelio A/B Testing
The first thing you have to do is create an A/B test as you have been doing so far. We have many examples of this. In the editor of an A/B test of Nelio A/B Testing, the new segmentation section appears at the bottom of the window.
By default, there are no segments created, because you will not always want to create segments in your A/B tests. But if you want to add a new segment you just have to click on the action that appears on the left (+ New) of the Segmentation section.
As you can see, we use a user interface similar to the one we have already been using for conversion goals and actions. Now, instead of goals you have segments, and instead of conversion actions, you have segmentation rules, as you can see in the following screenshot:
Imagine that you want only visitors who are in Spain to participate in the A/B test that you are creating. To do this, you have to select the location segmentation rule in Nelio A/B Testing, which is inside the visitor’s rules category (by clicking the person icon, as you can see in the following screenshot).
Now you can choose the condition you want to apply and the locations to which it will apply. In our case, as we want only Spanish visitors to see the A/B test and participate in it, we choose the condition so that “the location is equal to” and in the list of countries we select Spain:
As you can imagine, you can select more than one country. In such case, if the visitor is from any country on the list, then they would participate in the A/B test. You can also choose to select the reverse condition and then no visitor from Spain would participate in the A/B test. We offer all the possibilities for your segments.
In the same way, using the segmentation features in Nelio A/B Testing you can create more than one different group of visitors by creating more than one segment. Imagine that we want to create a different group of visitors to participate in the A/B test if they are visitors who come through a Google link.
In this case, we add a new segment that we name “Visitors from Google” and choose the segmentation rule that the checks the visitor’s referring URL. The referring URL is the URL from which the visitor comes to your page. In this case, we indicate that we want this URL to contain the word google:
With this configuration that we have created we have two groups of visitors: those who are in Spain and those who come from Google. If a visitor to your website reaches the page under test, if she belongs to one of these two segments then she will participate in the A/B test. This means that she will be assigned one of the versions of the page under test and the actions she performs will be analyzed to see if she completes any of the conversion actions you defined in the A/B test.
If the visitor is not in Spain or does not come from Google, then they will not participate in the A/B test, which means that they will see the original version of the page and their actions will not be tracked. For these visitors, the test does not exist.
You can also use segmentation to look at the results of your tests on a per-segment basis. If we have an A/B test with segments, on the results page of the test we can select the specific segment for which we want to see the results. In our case, we can choose to see the results of the visitors who are in Spain or see the results of the visitors that came from Google. But not only that, we also have the option of seeing the aggregated results. That is, the results of all the visitors who have participated in the test. In our case, they are visitors who were either in Spain or who came from Google.
The power that we have added to Nelio A/B Testing with segmentation makes us the most complete A/B testing tool for WordPress. If you haven’t put your website under test using A/B testing, don’t lose your time and download Nelio A/B Testing today from the WordPress.org plugin directory.
Featured image by JOSHUA COLEMAN on Unsplash.
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