When creating a form using the form button, the fields are placed on the form in random order.

Follow these steps to create a simple A/B test.

An A/B test is a randomized experiment using two or more variants of the same web page (A and B). Variant A is the original and variant B through n each contain at least one element that is modified from the original.

Before you can start testing, you need something to test on. Rather than randomly testing items on your homepage or adapting your checkout flow, start small. Test a change to a Call To Action (CTA), change the color of a button, or remove an extraneous form field. Once you're comfortable creating variants and experiments, you can expand the scope of your testing.

Find more idea starters in the ideas section of the Optimize resource hub.

Before creating your first experience, you need to identify a problem, then create a hypothesis (backed up by data) about what you can change to improve it.

What's the problem that you want to solve? Have conversions dropped off? Have traffic patterns changed? Have your demographics shifted? A close examination of trends in your Google Analytics reports is a great place to start.

Once you've identified a problem, assemble a team within your organization and solicit their opinion about the cause of the problem. Use feedback from this cross-functional team to form your hypothesis, an educated guess that you'll validate or invalidate with experimentation.

"Changing the color of the 'Add to cart' button from blue to green will increase revenue by 10 percent."

After you've identified a problem (low conversions), and worked with your team on a hypothesis (changing the button color) you're ready to test your hypothesis on your website.

To create an A/B test:

Go to your Optimize Account (Main menu > Accounts).
Select your container.
Click Create experiment.
Enter an experiment name (up to 255 characters).
Enter an editor page URL (the web page you'd like to test).
Click A/B test.
Click Create.

Use a fully resolved URL in the editor page. Redirects aren't supported here.

The variants card

The top of the experiment page includes the Targeting and variants section. This where you'll create the specific changes to your web page that you wish to test, called variants. You can create as many variants as you wish to test against your original page (the Editor page in Optimize).

Create a variant

To get started, click Add variant, enter a variant name, then click Done. Repeat this process to create additional variants. When finished, you'll see a list of your new variants on the variants card.

To start making changes. click anywhere in the variant row (which will say "0 changes"). This will launch the Optimize visual editor – an overlay on top of your editor page consisting of two components: the app bar (at the top of the page) and the editor panel (floating in the lower right).

Start editing:

Click on any web page element you wish to edit (e.g. a button).
Use the editor panel to make a change (e.g. change the button color).
Click Save.
Continue making edits as necessary.
Click Done.

Learn more about the visual editor.

Variant weighting

All variants are weighted equally by default in Optimize. A visitor who is included in your experiment has an equal chance of seeing any of your variants. If you want to direct more, less, or even all of your traffic to a specific variant, you can adjust your variant weights on the experiment details page.

Learn more about variant weighting.

Configuration

Measurement and objectives section

Configure your experiment objectives in the Measurement and objectives section:

Go to the experiment detail page.
In the Measurement and objectives section, ensure that you've linked to a Google Analytics 4 property.
Click Add experiment objective to select an objective.
Optional: Click Add additional objective to select additional objectives.

Targeting and variants section

Configure who and when to target on the Targeting and variants section.

Who to target

The Who section of the Targeting and variants section is used to select the visitors to whom you wish to target your variant. Enter a numeric value (in tenths of a percent) or use the slider to specify the percentage of your visitors to include in your experiment.

When to target

The When section of the Targeting and variants section determines where the experiment is shown. When is evaluated each time a user visits the experiment page. Use the rules to set where your experiment is seen. To create a targeting rule, click AND, then select a targeting rule type.

You must create either a URL or path targeting rule to start your experiment. The quickest way to get started is to create a URL matches rule with the same Editor page URL that you used when creating your experiment.

Targeting rules

Optimize includes the following targeting rule types, which you can read more about in the following articles:

Learn more about targeting.

Start your experience

Click Start, and when the status field says "running," your experiment is live on the web. Most updates happen within a minute.

How long should your experience run?

Keep an experiment running until at least one of these conditions has been met:

Two weeks have passed, to account for cyclical variations in web traffic during the week.
At least one variant has a 95 percent probability to beat baseline.

Experience management

Optimize provides several ways to manage your experiences, whether in draft, running, or ended status. This article explains how to search inside containers and how to access functions like edit, copy, stop, and archive.

Reports

To monitor a running experiment or see the results of a concluded experiment, click the Reporting tab at the top of the experiment detail page. The report is broken down into a series of cards that contain data about your experiment, including its status and how your variants perform against your objectives.

In addition to the reports included in Optimize, you can also see Optimize reports in Google Analytics. Sign in to Google Analytics, select the Reporting tab and select Behavior > Experiments in the report navigation. Learn more about Optimize reports.

In this video we'll show you how to create a new A/B test in Optimize in three easy steps, including how to create a variant, target an audience, and choose an objective.

Video: Create a new experiment in Optimize

Check these items on your forms before you distribute them.

1. Verify Data Sources

Verify that the tables and queries used by the form are valid. This includes checking the form’s record source and the row source of all combo boxes and list boxes.

2. Use Captions

Without setting the form caption property, the name of the form appears which may not be what you want your users to see.

3. Spell Check

Make sure that what the user sees is accurate and spelled correctly. In addition to the labels, the user also sees validation text and control tip text. A common mistake occurs when a control with these properties is copied, and only the label and control source are changed. In this case, other properties such as validation rule, input mask, default value, format, etc. may also be wrong.

4. Avoid Duplicate Hotkeys

Make sure accelerator keys (hotkeys) are not duplicated. Accelerator keys allow users to use the Alt key and letter to jump to a control. They are set by using the “&” character in captions followed by the letter. For instance, a Help button may have an “H” hotkey and appear as “Help” with its caption “&Help”. A common mistake is to assign the same key to multiple controls on the form. Test your form by using each hotkey twice and verify it doesn’t go to more than one control.

5. Command Buttons Must have an OnClick Event

If it doesn’t have an OnClick event, the button should be removed, made invisible, or fixed. Sometimes the OnClick event is accidentally assigned to the wrong event, such as the OnDblClick event. Alternatively, an OnClick event is not necessary if it has a Hyperlink.

6. Verify Tab Order

Make sure the tab order of the controls is correct. By default, the tab order should go left to right, top to bottom. This is what users expect. If your form does not behave this way, it exhibits unexpected (unintuitive) behavior which can be frustrating for your users. The default tab order can be easily set under the View, Tab Order menu. For situations where you want the tab order to behave differently (for instance, you may want it to go down columns for an option group), you can change this, but at least you’re making a deliberate decision to deviate from the default order.

7. Explicitly Set the Allowed Views

Views Allowed should be explicitly assigned to only display the way you want your users to see the form. Options include viewing the form in form view, datasheet view, and in Access 2002, PivotChart and PivotTable views. Without the undesirable options turned off, a user can change the view of the form by right clicking on the form and switching with the shortcut menu.

By default, the Shortcut menu property is set to Yes, and no shortcut menu is specified. This means Access’ default menu appears. If this is not desired, set this property to No.

9. Verify Help File Context IDs

If you are using a help file, make sure the help file name and help context ID are correct.

10. Avoid Missing Code

Make sure every event that has [Event Procedure] assigned actually has an event procedure defined. A common mistake is to assign the event without actually clicking through to write the code for it. This can also happen if you rename a control and forget to rename the event procedures tied to the old name.

11. Set AutoCenter to Yes

Make sure the AutoCenter property is set to Yes. AutoCenter ensures that when your form is opened, it opens in the center of the screen regardless of where you placed it when you saved it on your machine, or what the user’s screen resolution is.

12. Set Resize Property to Yes

Make sure the AutoResize property is set to Yes. AutoResize automatically adjusts the display of your form to the size you designed it. If this property is set to No, the form appears in the way you last saved it, which can easily be too big or small.

13. Set Combo Boxes LimitToList to Yes

Combo boxes should have their LimitToList property set to Yes so users can only enter values in the list. If this is set to No, users can enter any value. To support users adding new values to the list, set the LimitToList property to Yes, and use the NotInList event to handle the new values.

14. Increase Number of Rows Displayed for Combo Boxes

The drop down from a combo box should be greater than the default of 8 (16 for Access 2007), so that if your list is longer, more can be shown without the user being forced to scroll through them. We recommend 25 or more.

15. Set Combo Box AutoExpand Property to Yes

AutoExpand simplifies data entry by auto-filling the remainder of the selection based on the first few letters the user types.

16. Set AllowDesignChanges Property to Design View Only

The AllowDesignChanges property should not be All Views, but rather Design View Only. When set to All Views, users can change the design even though they are not in design view. This is something one rarely wants them to do. In fact, if the form property sheet is open the last time a form was designed, when a form appears with this property set to All Views, the property sheet also appears which is very confusing to end-users.

17. Use System Colors

For the BackColor property of form sections and controls, use the system gray color (-2147483633) rather than the default gray (12632256). In recent versions of Windows (Windows Me, 2000, XP), there's a slight change in the way gray is displayed, and the older gray appears darker than it should. Mixing these two values for older Windows versions is not a problem but you can see a difference on new versions. For Access 2007, see the tips below.