How can I tell if my Google content experiment is running?

Question

I've created a google content experiment without redirects using the docs.

The basic implementation involves a javascript snippet that uses the following code to choose the version of the experiment:

<!-- Load the Content Experiment JavaScript API client for the experiment -->
<script src="//www.google-analytics.com/cx/api.js?experiment=YOUR_EXPERIMENT_ID"></script>

<script>
  // Ask Google Analytics which variation to show the user.
  var chosenVariation = cxApi.chooseVariation();
</script>

<!-- Load the JQuery library -->
<script src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.0.0/jquery.min.js"></script>

<script>
// Define JavaScript for each page variation of this experiment.
var pageVariations = [
  function() {},  // Original: Do nothing. This will render the default HTML.
  function() {    // Variation 1: Banner Image
    document.getElementById('banner').src = 'bay-bridge.jpg';
  },
  function() {    // Variation 2: Sub-heading Text
    document.getElementById('heading').innerHTML = 'Look, a Bridge!';
  },
  function() {    // Variation 3: Button Text
    document.getElementById('button').innerHTML = 'Learn more';
  },
  function() {    // Variation 4: Button Color
    document.getElementById('button').className = 'button button-blue';
  }
];

// Wait for the DOM to load, then execute the view for the chosen variation.
$(document).ready(
  // Execute the chosen view
  pageVariations[chosenVariation]
);
</script>

However, when I visit the page using an incognito window, I only see the first variation of the experiment. When I check chosenVariation in the console, it's always 0. In fact, when I call cxApi.chooseVariation(); in the console, it always returns 0.

Is this because google recognizes my incognito browser windows, or is something broken with cxApi.chooseVariation(); or in my implementation?

I noticed the same, but chosenVariation returned 1 when I tried with a different browser — Nathan Power, Dec 28 '15 at 14:16

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 21 '16 at 15:21

I had the same problem, 100% of the sessions were given the original (0) variation. In order to fix the problem, I added the javascript code provided by the experiment. Go to your experiment (edit), click Setting up your experiment code, manually insert the code, copy the code in there.

Now since you (and I) don't want to have a redirect, remove this part at the end of the code <script>utmx('url','A/B');</script>. If your page is templated, you can use a variable and insert your experiment key (not experiment id) where you see var k='########-#'

Now either very few people use the experiments in a client-only fashion or we're totally stupid because it would seem to me that the guide is wrong and there's absolutely no documentation that shows a working client-only setup.

How can I tell if my Google content experiment is running?

1 Answers1