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Why teams need both DXI and Google Optimize

The Fullstory Team
Posted December 08, 2021
Why teams need both DXI and Google Optimize

The process of optimizing your website often includes testing and experimentation—which can be time-consuming and expensive. 

But with the right set of tools in place, continuous testing and optimization becomes a seamless part of your digital experience strategy. 

What does that look like? By marrying Digital Experience Intelligence with Google Optimize, you can keep a close eye on the digital customer experience and create an ongoing improvement process. 

We’re going to take a deeper look into these tools, how they work together, and how you can use them to improve your website’s results.

What is Google Optimize?

Google Optimize is part of the Google Analytics suite, and is a solution for running experiments on websites and customizing content for different audiences. 

The goal of Google Optimize is to enhance the user experience by testing different variables on a website to identify which drive the best results. Google Analytics is able to supply some, but not all, of the test result data—which is why Google Optimize is necessary for filling in the gaps. 

Get five quick tips for A/B testing to improve the digital experience in this blog. 

Google Optimize features include:

  • Integrations with Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager

  • Ability to build new variables with Google Optimize’s on-page visual editor

  • Improvement-tracking metrics, along with built-in probability and confidence calculations

  • Ability to conduct a single A/B test or multivariate test

What you can accomplish with Google Optimize

With Google Optimize, you can manipulate and rearrange images, text, and content, as well as substitute different calls-to-action (CTAs) and layouts.

Here are some examples of elements you can alter and test with Google Optimize:

  • Personalized CTAs

  • Logo size and position

  • Page colors and backgrounds

  • Element descriptions

For instance, you might create several versions of a page with different element variations, and designate which version should be shown to different types of users. Each user’s interactions with their prescribed site version will be logged, allowing you to evaluate which version elicits the most conversions. 

A simpler test might be to conduct an A/B test, where one group of visitors sees the A version of your site and the second group sees the B version. Then, based on which version converts at the highest rate, you can narrow your experiment and test the elements within that version. 

Your goal is to use these changes to evaluate their effects on your site’s user engagement, eventually improving your user experience with permanent changes.

Though a powerful tool, Google Optimize isn’t able to reveal the actual experience visitors are having while navigating your website—which is why it’s best when combined with Digital Experience Intelligence

Want to take your digital experience to the next level? Let’s chat.

Request your personalized demo or try a limited version of FullStory for free.

What you can accomplish with Digital Experience Intelligence 

Google Optimize can tell you a lot about which elements on your site influence conversions, but it can’t give you complete digital experience data and the ability to see recreations of users navigating your site. However, when you integrate Google Optimize with a DXI solution, you can see which tests are successful and why. 

Session replay—a key feature of DXI—elevates traditional web analytics and testing tools by showing a complete picture of the user on a website or app. Replays provide all the individual data points you get with a typical analytics tool, and insights to how those data points combine to create an experience. 

In other words, session replay helps you see your site through your customers’ eyes to understand where they’re encountering friction. 

How the two work together

Here’s a scenario that illustrates how these tools can work together to achieve powerful results. 

A designer at a SaaS company wants to enhance an existing website design, but is struggling to predict which changes will improve conversion rates. 

The designer hypothesizes that rearranging the page’s layout would increase engagement and, in turn, convert more sales for the business. This hypothesis seemed simple, but one thing was holding her back—data.

So, she enlisted Google Optimize and FullStory’s best-in-class Digital Experience Intelligence solution. 

The designer used Google Optimize to divide her visitors between two versions of the page. And while Google Optimize allowed her to easily split the audience, the insights and data it provided on the design weren’t as robust as she wanted. 

To fill in the gaps, she used FullStory’s DXI solution to create event funnels and record user sessions on both versions of the page. The designer could then segment the visitors on each version and create funnels to reveal how many people clicked through and ultimately converted. 

The designer was able to replay the sessions of any user to discover why they were or were not advancing in the funnel.

By using both Google Optimize and DXI, the designer was able to achieve clear results. The new version of the page received significantly higher engagement and conversion, which informed the designer of which permanent changes to make to the site. Without both tools, uncovering these optimizations would have been much more difficult and time consuming for the designer. 

Ready to personalize your digital customer experience with FullStory?

Request a demo or try a limited version of FullStory for free.

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The Fullstory TeamContributor

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