We’re psyched to announce that Optimizely now makes it possible to design A/B experiments targeted at a specific segment of your visitors.  Why is this a big deal?   Behavioral targeting enables you to run experiments targeted at, for example: new visitors, currently-logged-in visitors or visitors who have already made a purchase.

Our latest Optimizely release contains a new suite of experiment targeting capabilities that give you much better control over which of your visitors will see a particular experiment.  Here’s a complete list of the criteria you can use to target your visitors, with some more examples:

• New vs. Returning – e.g. only visitors who haven’t been here before
• Browser – e.g. only mobile visitors, or only visitors with modern browsers
• Language – e.g. only visitors who prefer Korean
• Cookie – e.g. only visitors with an active session cookie
• Referrer – e.g. only visitors coming from google.com, or visitors coming from one of your landing pages
• Custom Events (“Behavior”) – e.g. only users who have triggered the ‘madePurchase’ event
• Custom JavaScript (Advanced!) – e.g. only visitors for whom ‘user.accountAge > 365′ or only when ‘(new Date()).getDay() != 0′

To target a segment of your users in an experiment, click on ‘Advanced Settings’ in the test and expand the “Who Should See This Experiment?” tab:

To check out Optimizely’s new Behavioral Targeting feature, visit http://www.optimizely.com and enter your website to get started.  We’ve got a lot more on the way, and in the meantime leave a comment below and  tell us what you think!