Target: Online Behavior

Use this target in Web and Dialog activities Introduced in Feature Pack 2 and search rules to target customers whose recorded behavior while shopping on your site over time meets certain criteria. The recorded behavior of your customers can provide you with important clues about their interests. You can use these clues to personalize marketing messages.

WebSphere Commerce Professional WebSphere Commerce Enterprise Dialog activities are available only in the Professional and Enterprise editions of WebSphere Commerce.

There are two different types of recorded behavior that you can use in this target:

Scenario 1: Customer has searched for specific keywords
Scenario 2: Customer has viewed pages that contain a specific parameter on the page URL

To target customers according to parts of the catalog they have browsed, use the Catalog Browsing Behavior target instead.

Scenario 1: Customer has searched for specific keywords

For e-Marketing Spots on a search results page, you can use this target to display something relevant to what a customer has searched for in their recorded online behavior on your site. You can also use this target in a Dialog activity, for example, to email information about a promotion to a customer who has searched multiple times for a certain product.

Example

Here is an example of a Web activity that uses this target effectively:

When a customer views the e-Marketing Spot on the search results page: If a customer has searched for computer and monitor and speaker within the last three days, then display an advertisement for a home computer bundle.

Guidelines for using this target in scenario 1

When setting up this target, you must specify which keywords the customer searched for. You can specify one or more exact search keywords, portions of keywords, or a series of keywords. You can also specify:

The number of times the customer must have searched for the keywords.
The time frame in which the customer must have searched for the keywords, for example, within the last two days.

Alternatively, you can use this target to target customers whose recorded behavior does not include the keyword searches that you specify.

To determine when a customer has used the search terms you specified for the target, the server looks for a match in the searchTerm value on the CatalogSearchResultView URL. If your store uses page view names or URL parameter names that are different from the default, then the target will not work unless a developer performs some customization steps. See Changing the name of commands used in behavior rule matching.

Scenario 2: Customer has viewed pages that contain a specific parameter on the page URL

Use this scenario to target customers whose recorded behavior includes viewing pages with a specific parameter on the page URL.

Here is an example showing the contents of a page URL from the category display page for the Madisons store:

http://server01.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Category1_10000001_100000000051_100000000030_-1_100000000029_100000000029_image_0

How the parameters display in your store page URLs depends on whether the URL is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)-enabled:

For URLs that are not SEO-enabled, the parameters are the parts of the URL that display in the format name=value, for example, catalogId=12345.
For URLs that are SEO-enabled, like the previous Madisons store URL, the parameter names are defined in the SEO mapping and do not display in the URL; only the parameter values display in the URL. For example the number 10000001 in the URL example represents the parameter storeId=10000001. To use parameters from SEO-enabled URLs for this target, you might need to request this mapping from a store developer.

Example

Your company has a Facebook fan page that contains various links back to your store. When a fan has clicked any of the links three times, you want to thank the fan by displaying an ad containing a promotion code. The fan can use the promotion code to get 10% off an order. Here is a specific example of how to accomplish this:

On your Facebook fan page, you add various links to your storefront. You embed the following parameter in each of the links:
```
referral=facebookfanpage
```
For example, a link from your fan page to your home page looks like this:
```
http://www.aurora.com/shop/en/aurora?referral=facebookfanpage
```
To reward Facebook fans, you run the following Web activity in several e-Marketing Spots for fans who have clicked any of the fan page links at least three times:
When a customer views the e-Marketing Spot in the first row of the home page or on the search results page: If the customer's recorded behavior on your site includes visiting a page with the parameter referral=facebookfanpage, display an ad containing the promotion code for Facebook fans.

Note that this Online Behavior target scenario is similar to the Current Page target scenario that also uses a parameter on the page URL; however, with the Current Page target, your only option is to display your targeted marketing message in the e-Marketing Spot on the landing page from the link that you included on the Facebook page. With the Online Behavior target, you can use other e-Marketing Spots on your store pages, as long as the customer clicked the link you included on the Facebook page the number of times you specified. Clicking the link is part of the customer's recorded online behavior, and therefore the customer meets the target criteria as he or she shops on other pages. This way, you can communicate your marketing message on multiple store pages.

Guidelines for using this target in scenario 2

When setting up this target:

You can specify only one parameter name to match, but you can specify one or more parameter values.
You can specify that the server must match the exact parameter value, a portion of the value, or any value. The parameter value cannot contain commas; this is a reserved character.

You can also specify:

The number of times the customer must have viewed a page with the specified parameter in the page URL. Note that the customer must have viewed the page at least once for the target to match.
The time frame in which the customer must have viewed a page with the specified parameter in the page URL, for example, within the last two days.

Alternatively, you can use this target to target customers whose recorded behavior does not include viewing pages containing the parameter that you specify.

Prerequisite for using this target

Make sure your site is configured to support the Management Center marketing features.