Time To Say Goodbye To Google Optimize

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Digital Performance

Google has made the announcement that Google Optimize, their Conversion Rate Optimisation platform, will no longer be available by the end of September 2023. Optimize 360, their paid version, is also being retired.

Google Optimize delivered A/B testing, multivariate testing, and other key CRO tools to users for free. CRO is a great way to understand how a tiny change can make a huge difference in conversions and sales. It involves making small changes and delivering both the old and new versions to website users, to see what impact a tweak will make. As a mostly free platform that integrated well with Google Analytics, and was reasonably easy to use, Google Optimize has been a great part of the marketing toolkit for many.

Nevertheless, there are estimates that Google Optimize wasn’t as widely used as one might think. Although over 25,000 Google Optimise accounts have been made over the course of its lifetime, only around 5000 have ever run an experiment. Many of these only ever ran one test, before setting the platform aside. Google is known to have reassigned their engineers from the project over the past few months, and hasn’t been supported with updates or technical support in more than a year. These facts evidence why Google has made the decision to focus their resources into a more widely used platform.

For those who were in the 5000 experimenters using Google Optimize, it’s time to take action. Within every CRO experiment is vital data that should inform your marketing decisions.

Export your existing experiments

When Optimize’s servers are shut down, all your data will go with it. Make sure that you have a record of the data and results from the experiments that you’ve run, so that you’re able to continue to learn from them.

The easiest way to do this is to export the results into a CSV. There you can use it in reporting, or even upload it to a new platform if needed.

Check that your changes are hardcoded

One of the easiest features of Google Optimise was the feature that allowed users to deploy their changes onsite with a click of a button. Although great at the time, using this button doesn’t hard code a change into your site. Therefore, these changes will disappear when Optimize goes offline. If you haven’t already, make sure to log all the changes you have made and pass them to a developer to make sure they’re set in stone on your website.

Research a new platform

If you’re a frequent CRO experimenter, you’ll want a brand new platform to continue your tests. There are many on the market, all with different integrations, features and options. Make sure that you chat with your teams and understand their needs from a CRO platform; if you’ve not got a big technical resource, try to find something that is able to deploy changes without code changes. If you’re a big fan of multivariate testing, make sure that you’re not limited in terms of experiment numbers.

Keep an eye on Google’s announcements

It’s not unlike Google to remove a platform with the knowledge that there will be something better on the horizon. Despite the usage statistics, there could be more from Google in the world of CRO. Always keep an eye on their announcements to see if there’s a bigger and better CRO platform in development. There are even rumours that a version of Optimise will be incorporated into the new Analytics suite, GA4. If this is the case, it’s even more important to download your historical data to be integrated back into Google in future.

If you’d like to talk CRO with marketers who love to help businesses grow, Zinc are the agency for you.

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