CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Is it possible to embed PHP code in smarty templates?

Yes. I can't remember if CiviCRM disables it by default, but it is possible.  It's not a brilliant idea though and smarty is designed to stop you from doing that for a few reasons (security, seperation of different layers etc.)

Looking at that phpA/B site, my first thought was is there a smarty integration with phpA/B.  I then thought that it would be cool to have a more generic way to integrate that with CiviCRM since it seems like quite a powerful tool.
i.e. I reckon there is a way to integrate it, but including it at the smarty level is probably not the best way to do it.  Maybe via a call to a hook when the page/form is loading.

I suspect there are other ways to do AB testing on contribution pages that people have experimented with. I'll mention it to people and see if they have ideas to share.

Important topic. What we really need to support is the reporting, and the feedback into action. Ideally, you want to continue A/B testing until there is statistically significant difference in results as defined by a particular level of confidence, and then switch to the better alternative automatically.

Owen, is there a reasonable way to poll Google Analytics, or do a callback from it?

>Important topic. What we really need to support is the reporting, and the feedback into action. Ideally, you want to continue A/B testing until there is statistically significant difference in results as defined by a particular level of confidence, and then switch to the better alternative automatically.

Agreed (VWO the tool I posted below uses significance testing https://vwo.com/knowledge/calculating-ctbo)

>Owen, is there a reasonable way to poll Google Analytics, or do a callback from it?

It's got a good API, would just need to make sure the ecommerce tracking data went over in the right way in the first place. There's enough space for variables in the GA system for it but for example you'd likely want Campaign, Contribution form ID, a test ID and a variation ID.

>However I can also understand that not everyone wants to use GA (the original poster possibly being such). There are JS-based tools also such as

GA has understandably come up against some resistance from sectors of Civi community. JS/PHP and built into Civi would be the ultimate but that seems like more dev?


A split URL and a results page in civi compare #of donations or total amount donated seems to me to strike a balance between privacy and ease of implementation.

example.com/civicrm/donateredirect

Sends 50% to /civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=TEST1
the other to /civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=TEST2

Within Civi is a page that compares TEST1 to TEST2 and changes the redirect to one of them once significance on pre established criteria has been reached.

@Owen: I like your thinking on how this could be implemented in terms of a URL.

Perhaps a UX element like "Make an A/B test for this Contribution/Event... Page" could create a copy of the existing page using existing code, and set up other stuff behind the scenes as required.