Using query parameters in the URL is the best way to understand where your traffic is coming from and it's indicated with a question mark which comes after your actual web address. On Zoho PageSense, you can set up split URL experiments that automatically copy or redirect all the live query parameters from the original URL to the variation URL while running your test. By enabling the Redirect with Query Parameters option in the Split URL test, the visitors who visit your original URL are forwarded to the variation pages, along with query strings, such as source, medium, email, and name, for declaring the best performing version.
For example, say you want to show different types of home pages to users who have reached your ecommerce site by clicking the promotional banner that appeared on their email. Your URL link will look something like this: http://zylkerfashionsonline/homepage.html/?utm_banner_content=email. Here, the parameter in bold is the query parameter. It indicates the user has arrived on your web page from email. This will mainly be useful to your marketers who wish to know which parameter brings in traffic to your website, and what changes actually perform better and help convert more visitors on your business site.
Note: Make sure you don't include the redirection URL in the advanced URL match types of your Split URL test listed under the VARIATION page of your experiment.
To redirect URLs using query parameters in split url test:
While creating a new split URL test, enable the Redirect with query parameters option. Once you enable this option, all the query parameters included in the original URL, such as source, medium, etc., will be copied automatically to the variation URL and considered for split testing.
For example, you want to run a split URL test on the Signup page of your ecommerce site, zylkerfashionstore, with the following URLs:
Original URL: https://zylkerfashionstore.zohostore.com/signup.html
Variation URL: https://zylkerfashionstore.zohostore.com/signup-variant.html
Alternatively, you can enable this option on the VARIATIONS tab of your experiment as shown in the figure below.
Your shopping site offers a 50% discount on all products to visitors signing up through your Facebook ad campaigns and this offer should be displayed to visitors coming to your variation page. In this case, having a query or UTM parameter such as ?utm_medium=cpc at the end of your website's URL string can help identify each visitor who landed on your Signup page from the referrer source Facebook so that they are shown the appropriate product offers.
In the split URL test, by default, PageSense uses simple URL match to target web pages in the experiment which means that even though the original base URL is https://zylkerfashionstore.zohostore.com/signup, the experiment will also run on https://zylkerfashionstore.zohostore.com/signup-variant/?utm_medium=cpc and on every other page with parameters attached to the base or original URL.
However, if you don't enable Redirect with query parameters, you won't be able to track if the visitor arrived at the https://zylkerfashionstore.zohostore.com/signup-variant.html page via the Facebook campaign and not resulting in zylkefashionstore not offering the discounts to all of the right visitors.
To avoid this issue, enable the Redirect with query parameters option in your split URL test so that visitors who reach your original page with the query parameters in the URL https://zylkerfashionstore.zohostore.com/signup/?utm_medium=cpc will be redirected to the variation page including the same parameters as in the original URL such as: https://zylkerfashionstore.zohostore.com/signup-variant.html/?utm_medium=cpc which will ensure that data is tracked accurately throughout the split URL test.
Note: You can revisit and edit a running experiment to remove the redirect with live query parameter.