Put your online business on good tracks with Versioning and A/B testing

Discover now  these tools on Odoo Website & E-commerce

Summertime usually goes along with a typical business slowdown. Customers and employees take their annual vacation, new projects are postponed to September and communication plans are lowered to their minimum. At Odoo, we decided to roll up our sleeves instead... 

As we announced in our previous post last week, we took advantage of this period of the year to present to you our Odoo Online 2015 Summer release, a major revamp of Odoo 8 and a big step forward towards Odoo 9, the brand new version that will be released in the coming months.

What’s new on Odoo Website and E-commerce?

I would like today to introduce you two major features of this Summer release that will change the way webmasters and marketing people will use their website: Versioning and A/B testing

Odoo versioning : Managing and publishing web pages is now easier than ever 

Web pages aren’t meant to stay static. They evolve at least occasionally, sometimes every week or even daily. 
The big issue when you edit a page is that, when you click the save button, you cannot go back. And who never regretted hitting that button too fast and wishing to retrieve the old version ? Well, this time is over thanks to the new Versioning tool.

With this feature available on Odoo Website and Odoo eCommerce, you will now be able to easily prepare multiple versions of a website and switch from one to another in as little as one click. If you like to see your website as an experimental playground, this is a real game changer! You will be able to:

  • Work on new versions of a page without losing the published one

  • Replace one version by another in just one click

  • Create archives of your pages and retrieve your old versions anytime

  • etc.

Putting it into practice 

Let’s imagine that I am running a small clothing company and selling my items on my Odoo website. My online catalog has to change constantly in order to follow seasons and new trends. 

With the versioning feature, I will be able to safely prepare new versions of my website without threatening my actual content and and to switch from one catalog to another in a few clicks. 

Here is how it works :

  • First, I go on the page I want to create a new version and click on “Edit” ;

  • On the Version menu, I click on “new version” ;

  • I give a name to the new page I will create ;

  • I edit my new page by dragging, dropping and customizing the defaults building blocks ;

  • I save my work.

There you go! Still from the Version menu, I will now see my new page, waiting to be published. I just have to click on it and it will replace my current page. Of course, I can always go back to your previous version if needed.

So, let’s go back to my business. It’s the end of the summer season and I need to prepare for next winter collection. That’s why I have created a “Winter” version of my homepage. Just one click and my new collection is ready to be presented to the World wide web!











This versioning feature can be used for each page of your website and eCommerce catalog. You can now publish a whole new website in just a few clicks !

A/B testing : build the perfect website page after page 

Okay, this versioning tool is a great feature, but while we're at it, there's a way to make it even better! Just imagine yourself creating two different versions of your homepage. In order to optimize your website, you’re certainly wondering wether your version B has a better impact on your visitors than the version A. Well, this is now a question you can easily answer with our A/B testing tool that works together with the versioning feature.

With Odoo A/B testing, you will be able to publish simultaneously two versions of a same page, and see which one drives better results. How does it work? The tool will run “live experiments” by sending one half of your visitors to the original page and the other half to the test version at the same time. It will then collect the data on each page and display the results on your Google Analytics account, so you can compare useful metrics and only keep the best version!

Putting it into practice 

Let’s return to my clothing company and say I’m not happy with my Women Summer collection landing page. When visitors land on that particular page, they hang around for a few seconds and then bounce without visiting another page, resulting in a high bounce rate. How will A/B testing help me solve this problem?










First, I’ll use the versioning tool as illustrated here above and create a new version of my landing page with a few tweaks:

  • changing the picture ;

  • aligning the text from the right to the left ;

  • changing the color and copy of my call-to-action ;

  • and, last but not least, adding a “Free shipping” promotion as a subtitle.

Here is what it looks like:












Now, let’s run an A/B test and wait for the results ! Here is how it works :

  1. From the Version menu, I click on Launch A/B tests.

  2. A quick tutorial will help me to connect my Google Analytics account to the tool.

  3. I will be asked to choose a goal to measure. I set up “Decrease bounces”

  4. I launch my A/B test.


Now my A/B test is running, and it is just a matter of time before I know which page has the lowest bounce rate. I can access the statistics of my experiment anytime from my Google Analytics account, which displays the performances of my pages on a nice graph view.







You can of course run several A/B tests in the same time and manage everything from Odoo’s backend.

There is more to come!

As Odoo Founder Fabien Pinckaers declared during the Odoo Experience 2015 :

Customers and users are and should be our main focus; with the Odoo Summer Release 2015 we want to help businesses get closer to unfolding their true potential, and all this without activity disruption. Striving for continuous improvement and delivering great products is part of that aim 

Fabien kept his word with this new release - the Versioning and A/B testing features will enhance your Website and e-Commerce experience on Odoo.

Don’t hesitate to try it now!  


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