Splango: Drop-in Split Testing for Django

Splango is designed to help you take the first steps with split (A/B) testing with minimal friction. It allows you to instantly declare and run a split test experiment in your templates or in python code, and provides an admin UI for viewing simple funnel reports on the results.

Template Example

{% load splangotags %}

{# first declare the experiment and its variants #}
{% experiment "signuptext" variants "control,free,trial" %}

Welcome to my site! Please
<a href="/signup">

{# change what is rendered based on which experimental variant you're in #}
{% hyp "signuptext" "control" %}
   sign up
{% endhyp %}

{% hyp "signuptext" "free" %}
   sign up for free
{% endhyp %}

{% hyp "signuptext" "trial" %}
   sign up for a trial
{% endhyp %}
</a>

Python View Example

def mypage(request):
    exp = request.experiments

    expvariant = exp.declare_and_enroll("call_to_action", ["a","b"])

    if expvariant == "a":
        call_to_action_label = "try it"
    elif expvariant == "b":
        call_to_action_label = "this might not suck"

    if request.method == "POST":
        form = PleaseDoThisForm(request.POST)

        if form.is_valid():
            exp.log_goal("pleasedoform.completed")
            return HttpResponseRedirect(...)

    else:
        form = PleaseDoThisForm()
        exp.log_goal("pleasedoform.seen")

    return render_to_response("mytemplate.html", { 
       "call_to_action_label": call_to_action_label },
       RequestContext(request))

Things to Note

• In order to filter out bots, Splango injects a javascript fragment into your HTTP response. Only clients that have a Django session and can run javascript will be tracked in experiments.

• When a user logs in or registers, any experiment enrollments created while the user was an anonymous Subject will be merged into a Subject associated with the User. In case of conflict, enrollments previously associated with a logged-in Subject will override anonymous enrollments. In other words, Splango tries to be consistent as to what it presented to a particular human, as long as we can identify them.

Installation

• Ensure you have the dependencies:

  • django's session package
  • django's admin for viewing results
  • jQuery

• Put the splango directory somewhere in your PYTHON_PATH.

• In your project's settings.py:

  • add "splango" to INSTALLED_APPS

  • add this to your MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES after the session and auth middleware:

    'splango.middleware.ExperimentsMiddleware'
    

  • optionally, define a goal to be logged when the first visit to your site is made:

    SPLANGO_FIRST_VISIT_GOAL = "firstvisit"
    

    If this is defined, splango will automatically log the goal "firstvisit" as being completed on the user's first request.

• In your urls.py, include the splango urls and admin_urls modules:

  (r'^splango/', include('splango.urls')),
  

• Ensure jQuery is available on all text/html responses. Otherwise splango will not work. Splango will remind you of this by putting annoying javascript alert() messages on such pages if settings.DEBUG is true.

• Finally, go to /splango/admin to create and view experiments.

Usage Notes

• The names of experiments and goals are their sole identifier. This keeps things simple, but also means that typos can mess things up.

• Hypotheses within an experiment must have unique names, but you can reuse a hypothesis name (e.g. "control") in multiple experiments if you wish.

License

As documented in the LICENSE file, Splango is available for free use and modification under an MIT-style license.