E-Marketing Spot experiments display the same marketing
message in two or more different E-Marketing Spots. Use e-Marketing
Spot experiments to determine the best location on your store pages
for your marketing message. For example, you could display the same
ad for a shipping promotion on your search results page and on your
home page to see which location gets better results.
Before you begin
If the web activity that you want to experiment with does
not exist, create it. Depending
on the type of experiment that you are creating, you might also need:If you want to view revenue statistics that are related to
the experiment, make sure that a Site Administrator has enabled
the collection of revenue statistics before the experiment
starts.
Procedure
- Open the Marketing tool.
- Open the web activity that contains the e-Marketing Spot
that you want to experiment with.
- In the palette, expand the Branching section.
- Drag an Experiment element onto
the flow connector immediately to the left of the e-Marketing
Spot element that you want to test.
Alternatively,
you can right-click the e-Marketing Spot element, and then click Add
to Experiment.
A branch is created,
leading to a second path through the web activity. This is the experiment
path.
- Click the
Experiment element.
- Enter the experiment properties:
| Property | Description |
|---|
| Name |
Enter a meaningful name in the field. This name identifies
the experiment. |
| Branch type |
For e-Marketing Spot experiments, Random path is
the only option. |
| Frequency of element changes for each customer |
Select one of the following options:
- No change - Customer always sees the same content
- This option specifies that customers always see the same content
during the life of the experiment.
- Session - Customer sees the same content within a session
- This option specifies that customers see the same content during
the current session. They can see different content during the next
session.
- Request - Customer might see different content on each view
- This option specifies that customers are not restricted to seeing
set content for any length of time. They can see different content
as of the next site request.
When using this option for an e-Marketing
Spot experiment, the e-Marketing Spots must be on different pages
for the experiment to work properly.
|
| Maximum number of customers |
This option specifies the number of customers that are to
participate in the experiment. If you do not specify the maximum number
of customers, you must specify an end date. If the maximum number
of customers is reached when a customer reaches the experiment, they
continue along the control path. If the maximum number of customers
is not reached, then they are assigned to a path according to the
branch type. Once the maximum number of customers is reached, those
customers already participating in the experiment continues along
their assigned path. New customers do not participate in the experiment. |
| Start Date |
Define a start date and time for the experiment. You can either
enter a date in the field, or select a date by using the calendar
tool. Similarly, you can enter a time directly into the field, or
you can select one using the clock tool. If you do not specify a start
date, the experiment starts when the web activity is scheduled to
start. |
| End Date |
Define an end date and time for the experiment. You can either
enter a date in the field, or select a date by using the calendar
tool. Similarly, you can enter a time directly into the field, or
you can select one using the clock tool. If you do not specify an
end date, you must specify the maximum number of customers. |
| Session length |
The maximum duration of time to consider that the contents
of a customer's order were influenced by a marketing experiment. The
timing begins when the customer views an e-Marketing Spot that is
used in the experiment. The timing ends when the customer submits
an order. If the duration of time is less than the session length,
then the marketing services check whether the order contains SKUs
associated with the experiment recommendations. If so, revenue numbers
are included in the experiment statistics. If the Frequency
of element changes for each customer is set to Session,
the session length is also the amount of time during which
the customer sees the same test element. After the session time expires,
the customer can be assigned a different test element in the experiment. |
| Status |
Select the status of the experiment. You can select either Running or Suspended. |
- Click the Paths tab, and enter each
path's properties:
| Property | Description |
|---|
| Name |
Enter a meaningful name in the field. This name identifies
the path in both this tab and the Statistics tab. |
| Percentage |
Enter the percentage weighting for each path. This percentage
represents the frequency that a particular path displays. For example,
if a path is defined at 50%, it displays half of the times that a
customer sees this activity. |
| Sequence |
This column displays the path's position relative to the other
paths in the experiment. This column is hidden by default; to display
it, see Using table views. |
| Unique ID |
This column displays the internal database ID for this object;
this ID is used for troubleshooting purposes. This column is hidden
by default; to display it, see Using table views. |
- Optional: You can add more paths to the experiment
by right-clicking the Experiment element, and
then clicking Add Path. You can delete any
paths by right-clicking the path arrow, and then clicking Delete.
- Click the e-Marketing Spot element
in the experiment path.
The properties for the element
display.
- Identify the experimental e-Marketing Spot to display the
marketing message.
You can either enter the name of the
e-Marketing Spot and click
Find and Add,
or click the
Show utilities
view icon
to open the utilities view, and then search or browse for the appropriate
content.
- Click
Save to save
the activity, or click Close to close the Activity
Builder and return to the previous page.
Example
The following image illustrates how
to use the Activity Builder to create an e-Marketing Spot experiment
that tests the effectiveness of two different e-Marketing Spots for
the same ad for a shipping promotion.
Creating
e-Marketing Spot experiments