To simplify the process of collecting and sending customer shopping behavior data to
analytics providers, integrate with IBM Digital Data Exchange (DDX). IBM Digital Data Exchange (DDX) is offered as part of the
IBM Digital
Analytics solution.
With this integration, customer behavior data can be collected with existing analytics tags and sent to DDX. DDX can then
relay the data to IBM Digital
Analytics and IBM and
third-party analytics providers.
By using
DDX, you can
collect data about customer behavior in your store through a simplified analytics tagging format.
The format of the JavaScript object that is sent to
DDX with your customer behavior
data follows the W3C specifications for JavaScript objects.
- For more information about the W3C specifications for JavaScript objects, see the Customer
Experience Digital Data Layer documentation that is provided by the .
- For more information about DDX, see .
To enable the integration for stores that are based on the
HCL Commerce Aurora starter store, complete the following tasks:
- Enable the
useDDX setting in your analytics provider configuration file.
- Configure DDX to
deploy IBM Digital
Analytics tags to your
generated store HTML pages.
If your store pages already include
HCL Commerce analytics tags, you do not need to add any
new tags to integrate with
DDX. The data that is sent to
DDX, however, does
require a page type identifier value to identify the data as being from a specific page type. By
default, stores that are based on the
HCL Commerce Aurora starter store include page type parameter values on store pages. The page type values are
included as a parameter within the existing page view tag that is included on all store pages. If
your store is not based on this starter store, or you want to add other page type values, you need
to add the page type values to the page view tag on your store pages.
By enabling the integration, HCL Commerce no
longer calls store page cmCreate functions to pass parameter values for analytics
tags directly to IBM Digital
Analytics. Instead,
the DDX integration
configuration declares a JavaScript object, digitalData, which stores that
parameter value data. When your store is integrated with IBM Digital
Analytics, the tag function calls that are
deployed using DDX
automatically detect and transmit the data that is defined in the digitalData
JavaScript object to IBM Digital
Analytics and
other analytics providers.
Note: The integration to relay data through DDX to IBM Digital
Analytics does not support asynchronous
additions to the JavaScript object. For example, shopping cart Ajax calls continue to use
cmCreate functions to pass parameter values.