Creating IBM Digital Analytics Explore reports for WebSphere Commerce search

Explore is a powerful ad hoc reporting tool for the advanced analysis of behavioral data that is collected by IBM Digital Analytics, formerly known as Coremetrics Analytics. For sites using WebSphere Commerce search, Explore is well-suited for analysis of faceted search usage and performance because of the flexible nature of tag attributes. Insights gained through this analysis can drive incremental improvements to merchandising, guided navigation, and site search strategies.

Explore reports about search facet usage can provide answers to the following questions:

  • What percentage of sessions include a faceted search interaction?
  • Which search facets do customers commonly use together?
  • Does faceted search usage drive better site engagement, conversion, and revenue?

About this task

The following steps summarize how to pass search facet data to IBM Digital Analytics and then set up an Explore report that contains the data for analysis.

Procedure

  1. Tag your store pages to capture the search facet data. This step involves passing the facet data as Explore attributes by using the extraparms parameter in the WebSphere Commerce analytics tags.

    For an example of how the WebSphere Commerce starter stores capture this data, see Examples: passing data about search facet usage as IBM Digital Analytics Explore attributes.

  2. Using the IBM Digital Analytics Explore application:
    1. Define aliases for the attributes you are passing in so that the attributes have meaningful names in your report.
    2. Build your report for search facet usage and performance.

      For more information about defining aliases and building Explore reports, see the IBM Digital Analytics Explore User Guide.