Homepage Conversion Optimization With Wordpress Thesis Theme


Most folks who know me by now know that by day I am a social media marketer and by night I run lead generation projects. I have been using the Thesis Theme from diythemes for about 6 months now to help facilitate this. In large part things have been running really smoothly allowing me to focus on mission critical issues vs. getting stuck with heavy code modifications; simply put that is why I enjoy Thesis so much.

Recently I have decided that it is time to start testing my sites. I have been searching for an effective way to do this and recently came across a plugin from David Dellanave (site seems to be down atm) that allowed me to split test my Wordpress Thesis Theme.

Things You Will Need To Make This Work:

3 Google Profile IDs

Wordpress Split Test Plugin by David Dellanave

Step 1 – Create Two Theme Folders

  • Create two theme folders
  • theme1 (rename your current thesis folder to this)
  • theme2 (Copy paste your current thesis folder to here and rename it – this is where your test files will go)

    • Step 2 – Add Main Google Analytics tracking snippet

  • Under Thesis Options > Stats Software and Scripts
  • Add main google analtyics tracking code that way you have an account that encompasses all traffic.

    • Step 3 – Create Two New Google Profile ID’s

  • Create 2 google profile ID’s this way you can retain your main analytics account on the live(untested) site.
  • You should have two new google profile ID’s one for the “control” and the other for the testing version.

    • Step 4 – Add Analytics code to footer.php

  • Add custom analytics code to theme1 footer.php file and theme2 footer.php file
  • note: you should actually have 2 google analytics tracking code on each page.

    • Step 5 – Analytics Goal Testing

  • If you are testing a specific goal, (you should be) then you are going to want to make sure you have goals setup in each Google analytics account.

    • Step 6 – Modify Custom_Functions PHP Code

  • This setup is ideal for testing totally different designs with your custom_functions or custom css files.
  • One quick example for testing an object on the home page:

    • function homepage_custom_top () {
    if (is_home() || is_front_page()) { ?>
    ------insert custom content here-------
    }}
    add_action('thesis_hook_before_post_box' , 'homepage_custom_top');

The above code places custom content above your posts, only on the homepage, thus allowing you to test different content combination’s and callouts.

You can accomplish alot of this with Google Website Optimizer, however this is a quick and easy alternative for Wordpress Thesis Conversion tracking.

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