Ask Michel Komarov

Typically, online marketers have utilized standard “Split tests” to try and improve marketing and merchandising approaches. A split test allows a marketer to split traffic across different versions of a web page in an effort to identify topper-forming marketing variables.

During these testing scenarios marketers try to identify promotions that significantly outperform others, while testing titles and headers for the highest level of customer engagement.

Unfortunately these testing method doesn’t consider where are the people going from.

Customers from different sources could have different purposes and behavior. So it would be better to send web-surfers from Google, Yahoo, MSN to one test pages and marketes from WarriorForum, “How To Corp” forum to another test pages.

If they’re not targeted, they’re WASTING bandwidth

You’re able to split your traffic in a simple way with .htaccess file of your web-server. Use powerful RewriteEngine directives.

1. Turn on the RewriteEngine module
   RewriteEngine on
    
2. Define your target pages with RewriteRule directives
   RewriteRule ^/(index\.)? /index-seo.html [L]
RewriteRule ^/(index\.)? /index-directory.html [L]
RewriteRule ^/(index\.)? /index-bookmark.html [L]
RewriteRule ^/(index\.)? /index-forum.html [L]
    
   You’ll need to have these pages with different split tests: index-seo.html, index-directory.html, index-bookmark.html, index-forum.html. The search string ^/(index\.)? means the Rewrite rules would redirect everyone who opens your home page (http://yoursite.com or http://yoursite.com/index.html) to a desired target page.
    
3. And finally, define conditions to split incoming traffic with RewriteCond directives

   # For index-seo.html:
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \bgoogle\.com\b [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \byahoo\.com\b [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \bmsn\.com\b

   # For index-directory.html:
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \balexa\.com\b [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \bdmoz\.org\b

   # For index-bookmark.html:
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \bdigg\.com\b [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \breddit\.com\b [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \bco.mments\.com\b

   # For index-forum.html:
   RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \bwarriorforum\.com\b [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \bhowtocorp\.com\b [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \bwilliecrawford\.com\b [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} \baffiliatetalkforum\.com\b

   Note, all RewriteCond directives has to be placed above the appropriate RewriteRule directives.

So, your split-traffic section of the .htaccess would look like this:

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 31st, 2007 at 22:04 and is filed under Sales Pages, .htaccess Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.