A reason to be cheerful, Google Optimize is now free for all account holders.  When Google announced in March that Optimize was to become available to everyone, I have to admit I was excited as I wanted it yesterday, but guess what I didn’t want to pay for it.

The reason for my excitement is because Google Optimize provides business owners with the tools to answer a HUGE question: How can we better understand our website visitors, to deliver more relevant, engaging experiences?

It’s a million dollar question which we marketers are constantly trying answer, by delving into analytics, heat mapping tools, etc.  But if you’re new to Google Optimize I have summarised below how it can be used to help your business make smarter more informed decisions.

So what is Google Optimise?

Google Optimize, is an enterprise-class A/B testing and personalization tool.  As previously highlighted it’s an enterprise product from Google but with more than 250,000 users requesting an Optimize account Google listened and now it’s available to everyone – for free.  So thanks Google.

Is it easy to implement?

Of course and if I can do it, anyone can.  However this being said a recent survey showed 45% of SMEs don’t optimize their websites through A/B testing. The two most common reasons given were a “lack of employee resources” and “lack of knowledge to get started.”

If you’re part of that 45%, Optimize is a great choice for you. Optimize is ideal for SMEs who require powerful testing, but don’t have the budget or resources for an enterprise-level solution. Optimize is easy for anyone to set up, it’s simply a process adding an extra line of code your existing Google Analytics code and an extra snippet to avoid reductions in page loading times. In essence you can be up and running with Optimize in a few clicks.

So why not start using your Analytics data to design experiments and improve the online experience for your users.

Is it easy to use

If you’re worried about having to hire someone to run A/B tests or frustrated about not knowing how to do it yourself? Don’t be. The Optimize visual editor allows for WYSIWYG editing so you can change just about anything on your site with a drag and a drop. If you’re comfortable with HTML, JavaScript or CSS you can add rules directly in the editor.

The powerful targeting capabilities within Optimize enables you to serve the right experiences to the right set of users. And you have flexible URL targeting capabilities to create simple or complex rules for the pages where you want your experiment to run.

To find out if a targeting rule you’ve set will apply to a specific URL on your site, use the new Optimize URL tester. Just enter a URL and the tester will immediately tell you if that page is a match for your targeting rule.

Is it easy to understand?

Optimize calculates results based on your existing Analytics metrics and objectives, so the reporting shows you exactly what you need to know to make better and faster decisions.

They have also upgraded the improvement overview to help you quickly see how an experiment affects the metrics you care about most, whether that means purchases, pageviews, session lengths, or whatever else you’re tracking in Analytics.

What’s not to like.

What’s stopping you from trying Optimize?

Leading businesses are building a culture of growth that embraces the use of data and testing to improve the customer experience. Are you’re self do you want to lead the pack or would you prefer to be left behind? Really what are you waiting for?  Your customers won’t wait.  Give Goole Optimize a try today.