Duplicating variants and experiments

You can copy a variant inside an experiment, or copy a whole experiment, including onto another of your websites. A copy is always a new draft. The original is not changed, and nothing starts running until you start it.

Duplicate a variant

Use this when you want a second variant that starts from changes you have already made, instead of building them again.

1. 1Open the experiment and go to Settings.
2. 2In the Variants card, open the menu (⋯) on the variant you want to copy.
3. 3Choose Duplicate Variant.
4. 4Enter a name for the new variant and click Duplicate.

What the copy carries over

• Every change made in the editor
• Global JavaScript and CSS
• The redirect URL, for URL Redirect experiments
• Screenshots

What is reset

• The traffic split. All variants in the experiment go back to an even share. Use Edit Weights if you want a different split.
• Session counts and any Google Analytics audience, since the copy has not run yet.

Good to know

• You can only duplicate a variant while the experiment is a draft.
• You can duplicate the Original variant. The copy is a normal variant, not a second control.
• The name "Original" is reserved for the control variant and cannot be given to another variant.

Duplicate an experiment

You can duplicate an experiment from three places: the menu on the experiment page, the row menu in the Experiments library, and the row menu on the Home screen.

1. 1Open the menu and choose Duplicate.
2. 2Enter a name for the copy.
3. 3If your account has more than one website, choose the Website for the copy. It defaults to the experiment's current website.
4. 4Confirm.

The copy appears as a draft in the library of the website you chose.

What the copy carries over

• Hypothesis, description and the rest of the brief
• Variants, with their changes, code, redirect URLs and screenshots
• Primary and secondary goals
• URL, device, cookie and activation targeting

What is not carried over

• Status, start and end dates, results and visitor counts. The copy is a fresh draft.
• Deployed variants. If a variant was deployed to your live site, it is left out of the copy.

Copying to another website

This is useful for moving an experiment between a staging site and a live site. Everything listed above is copied as it is, so check these before you start the copy:

• URL targeting still names the pages of the original site. Update the rules to match the new site.
• Goals are copied by name. Make sure the same events exist on the new site.
• Redirect URLs on URL Redirect variants still point at the original site's pages.
• The editor URL and the run-length plan are cleared, because they describe the original site. Set them again for the new site.

You can only copy to a website in the same account.