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Marketing experiments

Marketing experiments enable Marketing Managers to run alternative paths within existing Web activities to determine whether small changes might improve the effectiveness of a Web activity.

You can add an experiment to a Web activity to deliver an alternative marketing message. An experiment can include an experimental version of any marketing element, such as a target customer segment, an e-Marketing Spot used to deliver the marketing message, or the marketing content. You create experiments by editing existing Web activities. By changing a single element on an experimental branch, you can experiment with:

In the Management Center, experiments are created in the Activity Builder, and are represented as optional paths through the Web activity.

The optional paths are called experiment paths, while the original path is called the control path. A Web activity can have more than one experiment path.

After the experiment is complete, marketing managers can compare results between the experiment path and the control path using the Statistics tab in the properties view for the experiment:

These results help determine whether the current marketing effort is effectively maximizing revenue by targeting the right audience with the most appropriate message. If not, incorporating the experiment path into the control activity might improve the efficiency of the marketing message.

In an extended site model, the statistics reflect the results in the current store. If the activity is defined in the asset store, then each store accumulates its individual statistics. In this way, you can evaluate the effectiveness of the same experiment in different stores.

Since experiments are integrated into Web activities, Web activities containing experiments created in the asset store can be used in an extended site. If you have the appropriate access, you can modify and delete experiments created in the asset store from the extended site. Experiments created in an asset store cannot refer to business objects that exist only in the extended site.


Map between experiments in the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator and the Management Center

There are several changes in behavior in marketing experiments with the move to the Management Center. If you have used the WebSphere Commerce Accelerator in the past to manage marketing experiments, you can review this section to view any changes.

Common behavior WebSphere Commerce Accelerator differences Management Center differences What this means to you
Marketing experimentation is supported. In WebSphere Commerce Accelerator, experiments are a separate marketing asset. While Web activity experiments incorporate a snapshot version of the control activity, they are otherwise distinct. Marketing experiments are now tightly integrated into existing Web activities. You can create an experiment in any Web activity to test whether certain changes might improve the results of the Web activity. Because the experiment is created inside the Activity Builder, it is more flexible, and easier to visualize customer interaction.


Related concepts

Experiment statistics collection and calculation


Related tasks

Work with marketing experiments


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