Simple Split Testing In A WordPress plugin?

[Forkbeard]

Hey, the world is full of ad/banner rotator plugins for WordPress, but most of them are random. I'm looking for one that can do some simple clickthrough tracking and display comparative stats over time, so that I can test different banners against my traffic and hone in on the best ones.

There are lots of complicated ways to do this using Google Analytics and other third-party tracking suites, but those are overkill for my purposes. Does anybody know of a simple plugin that does this sort of thing?

The closest thing I found in the WordPress plugins directory was FlowSplit, but it throws php errors in the admin area and does not function.

All suggestions gratefully considered. But if your suggestions is "that's easy, code it yourself" or "I could code it for you for $$$" please just save yourself some time and right now. Cheers!

[DamianJ]

It's not a WP plug in, but wouldn't OpenX do this for you?

[Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by DamianJ

It's not a WP plug in, but wouldn't OpenX do this for you?

It looks like it might, but as you say, it's not a WP plug-in and it doesn't look simple. There's tons of software out there to do this kind of thing, but most of it comes in these huge enterprise-scale silos of multi-featured mess and/or third-party services and APIs. I just want something that will let me test different banners and links on a blog (very easily and with a minimum of fuss) to see which ones get clicked more. Since I'll be using it on many different blogs, the idea of having it in a WP plugin (for instant, painless, no-thought installation) is attractive. If I've learned anything in my ten years as a webmaster, it's that simple tools get used while complicated tools languish.

For the moment I've found a kludge that combines Datafeedr Random Ads with the individual link tracking feature of WP-Click-Tracker. That gives me comparative click-through stats on any number of banners that I'm trying to compare, anyway. But ease-of-use is not quite there.

[Colmike9]

I would use PHP code widget and put in <? include "bannerphpfileurl.php" ?> in the sidebar.

Then in an external php file on your host, do this:

<?php
$advert = array();
  $advert[] = '<a href=""><img src="" />advert1</a>';
  $advert[] = '<a href=""><img src="" />advert2</a>';
  $advert[] = '<a href=""><img src="" />advert3</a>';


shuffle($advert);
echo $advert[0];
?>

Then either use tracking on the index that tracks exits, or if the URLs to the ads are the same, make separate redirect pages on your server for each ad to keep track.

Can someone modify this to make tracking better?..

I guess you don't need the php for the banners to be external, but it makes working on multiple sites much easier..

[Forkbeard]

Yeah, that's definitely the sort of tricks I'm talking about. But the goal I'm chasing is a WordPress plugin that does this stuff so I don't have to mess with separate php files and landing pages and all. The more moving parts, the harder it is to remember what I was up to when I look at a site three years later...

Like I said in the first post, there are a zillion ways to do the kind of stuff I'm trying to do; this is more a "help me find a plugin if it's out there" request than a "tell me other ways to do what I want to do" one. But I do appreciate the suggestions!