Google Website Optimizer and user-defined variables

Question

I'm trying to merge my Google Website Optimizer A/B testing with Google Analytics (in order to see how page variations affect stats like bounce rate, time on site, etc.). Eric Vasilik, who I believe works at GWO, recommends a technique for doing this that involves setting a user-defined GA variable that is dependent on what page variation the user has been shown. The description of his technique is here: http://www.gwotricks.com/2009/02/poor-mans-gwoanalytics-integration.html

Erik suggests calling the utmx() function on the "original" and "variation" pages in order to grab which page the user has been shown. But when I try doing this, it only works on the "original" page. This is because utmx() is undefined if the GWO control script has not been called, and that script only goes on the "original" page.

Am I missing something here? Since Erik works for GWO I'm sure he's right and I'm misunderstanding the technique, but I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Answer 1

There is something missing here, and that is that the GwoTricks article you reference really only works for multi-variate GWO experiments. There is a way to make this work for GWO A/B experiments. I've updated the article to describe how one does this. But, briefly, the code which sets the user defined variable needs to be moved up from just before the tracking script to be between the two scripts which make up the A/B Control Script. This way, the user defined variable can be set before any redirection takes place so that the tracking script on the alternative pages will have the user defined variable set properly.