Personyze vs Variolab – A/B Testing

Personalize your WordPress site for every visitor — and describe what you want in plain words instead of building it. Personyze is a complete personalization platform: recommendations, targeting, A/B testing, pop-ups, dynamic landing pages, web push and email personalization, all driven by unified visitor data. This plugin is the bridge between your WordPress site and your Personyze account. Activate it and the tag is on every page, your posts become a recommendation catalog, and your WooCommerce products sync automatically. No theme edits, no developer ticket, no code. Build campaigns by asking for them Personyze AI runs inside WordPress. It has its own screen under the Personyze menu, and a launcher in the corner of every admin screen — and of your own site while you are signed in as an administrator, where it is told which page you are looking at, so you can ask about the page in front of you. The prompt box shows how many AI actions your account has left this month. Tell it what you want and it does the work — it scans your site first, reads your brand colours, fonts, button style and tone of voice, and builds the campaign to match. What comes back looks like your site, not a template dropped on top of it. Don’t like a choice? Say “try a different colour” or “make the button square” and it restyles on the spot. You never touch CSS. Things people actually ask it: “Which pages are losing the most visitors? Put a location-based offer on the worst one.” “Build a welcome-offer pop-up for first-time visitors — match my brand.” “Show returning mobile visitors on the pricing page a demo booking bar.” “Which products should I discount this week?” “Duplicate my Black Friday campaign for returning visitors.” “Pause the checkout pop-up.” Describe who should see it and the agent compiles that into real targeting conditions and reads them back to you, so nothing subtly different from what you asked slips through. New campaigns are created in staging and shown only to visitors arriving from a staging IP — your live site is untouched until you publish. Changes that affect live traffic are named and confirmed one at a time. Ask “what should I improve this week?” and it looks across your pages, products and campaigns and comes back with ranked opportunities — a page leaking returning visitors, products people view but rarely buy, a campaign that has quietly stopped showing — each with a one-tap action to fix it. Full details in the Personyze AI Agent guide. Rewrite a landing page with one prompt The WYSIWYG visual editor opens any page of your site as a canvas. Click an element to change text, swap an image, restyle it, hide it or move it. Or hand the whole page to the page-level AI: “Rewrite this page for enterprise buyers.” “Make the calls to action more urgent.” “Refresh the styling to look more modern.” “Tighten every paragraph.” The AI inspects the page, applies its edits as ordinary change records, and tells you what it did in a couple of plain sentences. Every change — yours or the AI’s — lands in a reviewable list with Undo, Focus on page and Show original, so you can compare against the untouched page before saving. Two things worth knowing. Nothing is written back to your WordPress content: edits are stored as a Personyze action and rendered for the audience you target, so your posts, pages and theme stay exactly as they are. And scope is yours to set — by default an edit applies to every page sharing the same element structure (edit one product page, cover the whole template), or you can limit it to a single URL or a page group. Both editors are also reachable from Claude, ChatGPT and other assistants through the Personyze MCP server. Recommendations that work the moment you connect This is the part that needs no setup at all. Both feeds are on by default — your posts and pages become an article catalog, and your WooCommerce products sync as a product catalog — so content recommendations and product recommendations have something to work with immediately. No feed to build, no CSV to upload, no tagging exercise, and nothing to switch on in a second product. Both are re-read once a day, so posts you publish or edit reach recommendations on their own. You control them from Personyze → Settings in WordPress, not from somewhere else: turn either feed off and Personyze stops recommending from it. The product feed appears only when WooCommerce is active. The feed URLs are shown on the same screen, so you can open them to see exactly what Personyze reads, or point another system at the same catalog. Knowing what someone is reading takes no configuration either. The plugin reports the WordPress post or product ID directly as each page is viewed, and the catalog is keyed on that same ID — so “visitors who read this also read this” works without page groups, URL patterns or a container set up to scrape the address bar. Personyze then picks from 300+ recommendation algorithms and blends several at once, rather than making you commit to one: Visitors who read this also read this — collaborative filtering across your posts Content-based similarity — matched on the words and topics in the article itself Interest-based — built from what this particular visitor has read before Trending and most popular — right now, or within a category Recently viewed and continue reading — pick up where they left off Bought together and cross-sell for WooCommerce stores Filters, fallbacks and boosts let you keep recommendations on-brand — surface only one category, exclude out-of-stock products, or push a promoted post to the top. Show them anywhere: a slider under an article, a sidebar strip, a grid on the category page, inside a pop-up, or open-time in an email so the products refresh at the moment the message is opened. An AI chat agent and AI search that already know your content The same feeds do double duty. Because your posts, pages and products are already in Personyze, its AI chat agent can answer from them — searching your articles to answer a question, pulling up a product with its price and stock, linking straight to the page it came from. There is nothing to index and no knowledge base to assemble first: the catalog the plugin feeds is what it reads. Article search is available to the agent whatever kind of site you run — a publisher is not a shop, and answering “do you have anything on X?” from your own writing matters as much as answering “how much is X?”. Add product search on top wherever WooCommerce is active. The same catalog powers AI search on your site: a visitor’s question in plain words returns your actual posts and products, ranked by meaning rather than by keyword matching. And because both are fed daily, an article published this week is answerable this week. You can give the agent more to read — crawl the rest of your site, or add documents and answers by hand — but the content feed alone is enough to make it useful on day one, and it stays current on its own. Decide who sees what Target with 70+ conditions across behavioural data, geography, device, referral source, weather, UTM parameters, cart contents, CRM fields and returning-visitor history — combined however you like, and available to the AI agent in plain words. Geo-targeted offers, dynamic landing pages that echo the search term someone arrived on, and account-based messaging for identified companies (via an ABM data integration such as Albacross, 6sense or ZoomInfo) all run on the same engine. Not sure a change is an improvement? Run it as an A/B test instead of a guess, and compare variations by conversions and revenue rather than clicks. What else you can run on your WordPress site Pop-ups, banners and announcement bars from a template library — spin wheels, quizzes, welcome mats, countdown bars, exit-intent offers Social proof and urgency messaging — live visitor counts, recent purchases, low-stock nudges Web push notifications for subscribers who left Email personalization and cart-abandonment follow-ups Analytics per campaign — visits, impressions, clicks, conversions and revenue, with variations side by side What the plugin itself does One-click connection — approve once in WordPress and the site is connected. No account number, no tracking code, no application password to create by hand. The AI agent, in WordPress — its own screen under the Personyze menu, plus a launcher on every admin screen and on your own site, which knows which page you are looking at. One-click tracker install — the Personyze tag is on every page. No theme edits. Disconnect and reconnect — move the site to a different Personyze account whenever you like; the old credentials are revoked as you go. Content catalog feed — your posts and pages become an article catalog for content recommendations. On by default, switchable from the plugin, and readable at its own URL. WooCommerce product sync — products sync automatically, with add-to-cart and purchase tracking. On by default wherever WooCommerce is active. Article and product view tracking by ID — the plugin tells Personyze which post or product is on screen, so recommendations and interest profiles need no URL rules to work. Content for the AI chat agent and AI search — the same feeds are what they answer from, so both know your site without any indexing step. WordPress shortcode blocks — render your own WordPress and page-builder templates inside a Personyze campaign, so personalized blocks match your theme exactly. Dynamic variables — drop visitor fields such as city, industry or company name straight into your WordPress content. Who it’s for Marketing and growth teams on WordPress and WooCommerce who want enterprise-grade personalization without an enterprise implementation project. Publishers use it to lift pages per session with content recommendations; stores use it for product recommendations and cart recovery; B2B sites use it for account-based and industry-specific landing pages. If you have compared Optimizely, Dynamic Yield or VWO and found them too heavy, this is the tier below in cost and effort, not in capability. A Personyze account is required. See plans and pricing, book a demo, or read the plugin setup guide. External services This plugin connects your site to Personyze, a third-party personalization service, which is required for the plugin to function. Tracking tag. The plugin loads the Personyze tracking script on your site’s front end. When a visitor loads a page, their browser sends page URL, referrer, device and browser information, approximate location derived from IP address, and on-site interactions to Personyze, where a visitor profile is stored and used to serve personalized content. Content and product sync. Personyze reads your published posts, pages and WooCommerce products through the WordPress REST API, using the application password you create, in order to build the recommendation catalog. WooCommerce add-to-cart and purchase events are sent when you enable that option. Service provided by Personyze: personyze.com — Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, GDPR and data processing.

Run A/B tests on WordPress pages or on HTML landings you’ve imported — including the ones your AI tool just generated. Drop a .html (or a .zip with CSS/JS/images) into wp-admin → A/B Tests → Import HTML; Variolab renders the page byte-perfect with zero WordPress wrapper, then runs a real 50/50 cookie-split test against any existing page on your site. Claude, v0, Lovable, Cursor, bolt.new exports all work out of the box. The classic two-page path works too: point the plugin at two existing pages — one as the control (Variant A), one as the variant (Variant B). Visitors are split 50/50 via a persistent cookie; once assigned, they always see the same variant. Tracking is fully internal: impressions and conversions land in a custom database table, and the wp-admin dashboard shows conversion rates, lift, and a basic statistical significance indicator (two-proportion z-test). Security-audited internally before every release (situated checklist + OWASP grid). See SECURITY.md on GitHub for the disclosure policy and the latest audit report (docs/security/latest.md). Features HTML / ZIP import for landing pages built outside WordPress — drop a .html or a .zip with assets; pages render byte-perfect with zero theme wrapper. Ideal for AI-generated landings (Claude, v0, Lovable, Cursor, bolt.new), hand-coded HTML, or mockup-tool extracts. Watch directory — keep editing the HTML in your IDE / Cursor / SFTP / cloud sync; WP-Cron picks up changes every 5 minutes (hash-based, additive only). Page-level A/B tests (entire page as variant — no Gutenberg surgery needed) Persistent cookie split (httponly, samesite=Lax) Internal tracking — no third-party dependency, no data leaving your site Conversion goals: URL visited or CSS selector clicked Auto bypass for logged-in editors and bots Two-proportion z-test for statistical significance abtest_event_logged action hook ready for v2 GA4/webhook integrations Caching A/B testing breaks under page caching: the first variant served gets cached for everyone, all subsequent visitors get that same response, the 50/50 split dies. The plugin handles most cases automatically. What the plugin does automatically Sends Cache-Control: no-store headers on every page response under A/B test. Respected by Cloudflare, Varnish, Kinsta edge cache, nginx page cache, and most server-level caches. Hooks WP Rocket’s rocket_cache_reject_uri filter when WP Rocket is detected — your test URLs are auto-added to the never-cache list. Hooks LiteSpeed Cache’s litespeed_force_nocache_url filter when LiteSpeed is detected — same idea. Surfaces an admin notice when a cache plugin or known host (like Kinsta) is detected, with what to verify. Hosting on Kinsta Kinsta uses a two-layer cache (nginx server-cache + Cloudflare Enterprise edge cache). The plugin’s no-store headers bypass both — but for 100% safety, also add your test URLs to MyKinsta → Tools → Cache → Cache Bypass as URL Patterns (e.g. ^/promo/$). After publishing a new test, purge the Kinsta cache to flush any version cached before the experiment started. Verify it works by inspecting headers on your test URL: curl -I https://yoursite.com/promo/ Look for X-Kinsta-Cache: BYPASS (or MISS). If you see HIT, you’re getting the cached version and the split is broken — purge the cache. Hosting on other CDNs / hosts Cloudflare APO: Cache-Control headers from origin override the cache. Should work out of the box. Verify with curl -I looking for cf-cache-status: BYPASS or DYNAMIC. WP Engine: Add the test URLs to the “Cache Exclusions” list in your User Portal. Pagely / Pantheon / Pressable: Cache-Control headers respected. Add manual URL exclusion in the host’s panel for safety. Plugins not auto-supported For W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache, WP Fastest Cache, and Cache Enabler — the plugin shows a notice but does not automatically exclude URLs (no clean public API). Manually add your test URLs to that plugin’s cache exclusion list. REST API Pull stats programmatically from external tools (n8n, Make, Pipedream, dashboards). Endpoint: GET /wp-json/abtest/v1/stats Auth: WP Application Passwords (Basic Auth). The user must have manage_options. Generate one in your WP profile → Application Passwords. Optional query params: url=/promo/ — filter to a single test URL. experiment_id=38 — fetch a single experiment by ID. status=running|paused|ended|draft — filter by status. from=YYYY-MM-DD&to=YYYY-MM-DD — restrict event date range for the stats computation. breakdown=daily — include per-day time series (for charting). Example: curl -u 'admin:xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx' 'https://yoursite.com/wp-json/abtest/v1/stats?status=running' The response includes for each experiment: id, title, test_url, status, dates, control/variant IDs, goal, and a stats block with A/B impressions/conversions/rate, lift, p-value, significance, and 95% confidence interval bounds for both lift and absolute difference. Privacy The plugin stores no raw IP, no User-Agent, no email, no name, and no cross-site tracking identifier. The events table contains: experiment_id, variant, test_url, event_type, created_at, and a visitor_hash = first 16 hex chars (64 bits) of sha256(IP + UA + wp_salt('auth')) — non-reversible, single-site, salt-rotated, dedup-safe. Cookies are httponly, samesite=Lax, secure on HTTPS, value = a single letter (a/b/c/d), 30-day TTL. A native WordPress privacy guide snippet is registered automatically — find it under Settings → Privacy → Policy Guide → Variolab – A/B Testing to paste into your privacy policy. For consent-banner sites: enable “Require consent” in the plugin settings and wire your banner to the abtest_visitor_has_consent filter (return true to track, false/null to block). Snippets for Complianz, CookieYes, and Cookiebot are in the README on GitHub. Right to erasure: because no reversible identifier is stored, individual deletion isn’t possible. Use TRUNCATE wp_abtest_events to erase all A/B testing data. External services This plugin connects to one external service, only when the site administrator opts in through the plugin’s Settings → Google Analytics 4 panel by entering a Measurement ID and API Secret. With the GA4 integration disabled (default), no data leaves your site. Google Analytics 4 (Measurement Protocol) What it is and what it’s used for: when the GA4 integration is enabled, the plugin forwards A/B-test impression and conversion events to Google Analytics 4 via the Measurement Protocol, so the test results can be analyzed alongside your existing GA4 reports. What data is sent and when: on each impression and each conversion logged by the plugin, a single fire-and-forget HTTPS request is sent to https://www.google-analytics.com/mp/collect with a JSON payload containing: client_id — the plugin’s internal visitor hash (truncated salted SHA-256 of IP + User-Agent; never the raw IP or UA) events[].name — abtest_impression or abtest_conversion events[].params.experiment_id — the WordPress post ID of the experiment events[].params.variant — the variant served (a, b, c, or d) events[].params.test_url — the URL path under test (e.g. /promo/) No raw IP address, User-Agent string, email, name, WordPress user ID, or page content is sent. Service provided by Google. Please review their terms and policies before enabling the integration: Google Analytics terms of service: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/terms/us/ Google privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy