You just enabled Optimize and want to understand concepts, UI, and a confident first-test build.
The Optimize mental model (four nouns to remember)
- Optimization: A container for your experiment or personalization project.
- Variation: The experiences (A, B, C…) you’ll show to different audiences or splits.
- Audience: Rules that decide who sees what (UTMs, device, geo, page, CRM/MA properties, ABM company, custom attributes, etc.).
- Insights/Overview: Where you monitor performance and (with connections) revenue impact—plus an ROI simulator.
A guided tour (click-by-click)
- Wire your foundation
- Open your site → Insights → Integrations → Google Analytics 4. Choose automatic setup or add your Measurement IDs manually. Publish and confirm events.
- Optional (Enterprise): Connect HubSpot, Salesforce, Marketo, 6sense. Imports may take time; you’ll later build audiences from those fields.
- Create your first Optimization (start simple)
- Pick a high-traffic template: Homepage or a CMS template powering top articles.
- Variation A (Control): No changes.
- Variation B (Hypothesis): New hero headline, shorter subhead, CTA label change.
- Audience: “All visitors.” Split: 50/50.
- Primary goal: CTA click event; Secondary: scroll depth. (Both visible in GA4.)
- QA like a pro
- Use Optimize’s preview to check both variations.
- Open a test window with
?utm_source=test
(or another parameter you plan to target later) to confirm audience rules will work when you expand. - Verify GA4 event names and parameters are showing in Realtime.
- Publish & monitor
- Give it at least 1–2 weeks unless you have very high traffic. Resist ending early on noisy early data. (See Webflow’s “Get started” + CRO best-practice guidance.)
Starter glossary you’ll see in docs
- Rules-based audiences: If/then logic using URL params, device, location, referrer, time, CRM fields, ABM company attributes, and more.
- Enhanced match / Deanonymization: Enterprise capability that increases the chance of linking a session to a company/visitor profile using services like 6sense/Demandbase.
- Custom attributes: Your app/site can set a JS attribute (e.g.,
user_plan="pro"
) and Optimize can target on it (enable under Integrations).
A realistic “First 90 Minutes” plan (agenda you can copy)
- 0:00–0:25 — Connect GA4; confirm events (pageview, CTA click, form submit).
- 0:25–0:55 — Build one hero test on the homepage; 50/50 split.
- 0:55–1:15 — Add a secondary goal (scroll or secondary CTA).
- 1:15–1:30 — QA previews; publish; set a 2-week calendar reminder to review Insights/GA4.
Example: the simplest “hello world” test
- Hypothesis: Changing the CTA from “Book a demo” → “See it in action” increases clicks.
- What to edit: The button’s text layer and microcopy under headline.
- Success measure:
cta_primary_click
event; consider adding a click parameter for the variant label to verify routing in GA4.