Creating web activity experiments

Web activity experiments display different marketing activities in the same e-Marketing Spot to determine which web activity is more effective at driving sales.

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 the following business objects:

Customer segments
Content

Procedure

Open the Marketing tool.
Open the web activity for which you want to test the effectiveness of a subsection of a web activity.
Drag an Experiment element onto the flow connector immediately to the left of the customer filter that begins the section of the activity that you want to test.
You can alternatively right-click the customer filter element; then click Add to experiment.

A branch is created, leading to a second path through the experiment. This branch is the experiment path. You can move more elements on to the experiment path as necessary to test the complete web activity.
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	Select one of the following options: Random This type creates weighted random paths. Each path is assigned a relative weighting, which represents the percentage of customers that follow each path. For example, 30% of the customers can follow Path A, while 70% follow Path B. First path for which the customer qualifies For this type, the customer can follow only one path, which is the first path that starts with a customer filter for which the customer qualifies. The paths are evaluated from top to bottom as represented in the web activity builder. The First path for which the customer qualifies branch type is recommended for web activity experiments. This property ensures that customers see only 1 web activity during the experiment.
Frequency of element changes for each shopper	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, if they qualify for a different path. 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, if they qualify for a different path.
Maximum number of customers	This option specifies the number of customers that 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 continue 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. The date and time are based on the current system time for the machine where WebSphere Commerce Server is installed.
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. The date and time are based on the current system time for the machine where WebSphere Commerce Server is installed.
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 shopper 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 the Paths 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: If necessary, you can add more paths to the experiment by clicking New. Conversely, you can delete any paths by selecting the path, and then clicking Delete.
Click the customer filter element in the experiment path.
The properties for the element display.
Specify the differences that make the elements on the experimental path different from the control path.
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 web activity builder to create a web activity experiment that tests the effectiveness of running activity X (if shopping cart value is greater than $50, then display hardware discount ad) compared to running activity Y (if shopping cart value is less than $50, then display hardware discount ad) in the e-Marketing Spot in the catalog banner.