Compare with GWO

Head-to-head comparison with Google Website Optimizer

As far as I know, Google Website Optimizer is the only other free service for experimenting with different content on a live webpage. It is certainly the most popular.

So, naturally, you may want to know how Genetify compares with GWO. I did myself, so I studied GWO extensively and I talked with people who have run it on real money-making websites.

Here is my comparison, aiming to be as objective as possible.

Two-sentence summaries

• GWO rates your ideas based on rate of conversion. Ideas are expressed in HTML and stored on their server.
• Genetify chooses between your ideas to optimize your goals. Ideas are expressed in HTML, CSS or Javascript and are stored inline, in your code.

Feature	Google Website Optimizer	Genetify
Store content in your own files	No. You store the things you want to test on the GWO server.	Yes. You store the things you want to test inline, in your own files.
Experiment within external CSS or Javascript files	No. GWO only injects code into an HTML document.	Yes. See usage.
Modify an experiment at any time	No. You can’t modify an experiment once it is running.	Yes. You can add a new variant, fix a spelling mistake or otherwise modify an experiment at any time. You accept the risks of altering the meaning of the results.
Automatic setup of new experiments	No. You need to copy a previous experiment and overwrite its variants, or else you need to enter new control and tracking codes in your page.	Yes. When you write the name of a new gene into your code, you effectively create a new experiment.
Control panel on your page. Onsite optimization.	No. You must log into the GWO site to see all your variants.	Yes. You can load a control panel onto your page at runtime that lets you cycle through all your variants and do other useful things.
Seperated content as a single variant	No. GWO organizes variants into contiguous sections.	Yes. Genetify allows you to classify multiple elements anywhere on a page as part of the same variant. For instance, a link repeated in a top and bottom navbar.
Multiple experiments can share the same code for a goal	No. For each additional experiment sharing a goal, you need to duplicate the goal and change the duplicate’s ID.	Yes. You can put in a call to genetify.goal once (say on your purchase page) then reuse that code for multiple experiments.
Weighted goals	No. GWO only allows a binary yes/no goal.	Yes. You can assign any numeric value to a goal, for instance the price of an item.
Multiple goals per experiment	No. Although you can trigger the same goal in different ways.	Yes. Goal values are summed to determine optimization.
Attach a goal to any event	By hack. GWO expects you to put the goal in a <script> tag on the conversion page.	Yes. You can simply call genetify.goal from anywhere.
Visibility into statistical algorithm	No. Google does not say exactly how the significance of results are determined, although it sounds like they are using some kind of regression based on a normal distribution.	Yes. You can look up the genetify algorithm line-by-line. You can also play with it based on real-time results.
Reports	Yes.	Minimal. Hopefully more coming soon.
Real-time results	No. You must wait up to a day for results.	Yes.
Calculations of statistical significance	Yes. Although, since the algorithm is hidden, the validity of the numbers can’t be checked.	No. Hopefully coming soon.
Testing of interaction effects	Yes.	No. Hopefully coming soon.
Segmentation	No.	No. Hopefully Genetify will soon take into account visitor characteristics and other variables when optimizing.
Integration with Google Web Analytics	By hack. See this article.	Coming soon. As a beta feature, Genetify can record each unique combination in an experiment as a unique pageview in GA, and each goal as an ecommerce transaction.
Host the necessary Javascript file yourself	No. GWO requires a dynamically generated JS file.	Yes. Genetify.js can be stored on your server, so you can ensure reliability.
Host everything yourself	No. GWO is only available as a third-party service.	Yes. You can install the genetify server on your own machine and control everything about it.
Whole page A/B testing	Yes.	No. This is not an elegant way of testing.