how to implement a/b testing

anyone has any idea of how to implement a/b testing?? such as tools or methods that can be used to implement into yii

IMO, Load testing a Yii site should be done by an external tool/component that doesn’t need to interact or to be implemented into Yii - for the results to be real-world.

The simple, yet powerful “Apache Benchmark (ab)” tool should serve the purpose? or may be you’re expecting some specific application?

To A/B test different layouts/sites I am using themes:

Create a theme A and a theme B. On the first page load assign that specific theme to the user by storing it in the session and/or cookie.

Passing a custom variable to google analytics (simply use the theme name) can help you analyse your A/B test.

Some specialized ?GET parameters in the site’s URL and making them work according to your needs (be it selection of a theme or auto-login as a user), by tweaking components/Controller.php’s beforeAction() - might help in this case?

If you were to follow something like above, you might have to load test a set of urls like below, that will auto-load the given theme or login the given user:




http://your-site.com/some-page?theme=theme1&user=user1

http://your-site.com/some-page?theme=theme1&user=user2

http://your-site.com/some-page?user=user3

etc.,



Hm, need to get a in-depth analysis on the different UI, such as heatmap, click-timeline and so on.

So you suggesting to write a randomized beforeAction function? but what about those who hasn’t logged in? we might need to track the successful signUp too.

jrn, i was thinking even the first page have theme variations, but sounds like sessions/cookies are what i need to differentiate the users.