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Create e-Marketing Spot experiments

E-Marketing Spot experiments display the same marketing message in two or more different E-Marketing Spots. You use e-Marketing Spot experiments to determine the best location on the store pages for the marketing message. For example, you could display the same advertisement for patio furniture on the home page and on the shopping cart page to see which location gets better results.


Before you begin

If the Web activity that to experiment with does not exist, create it. Depending on the type of experiment that you are creating, you might also need:

To view revenue statistics related to the experiment, make sure a Site Administrator has enabled the collection of revenue statistics before the experiment starts.


Procedure

  1. Open the Marketing tool.

  2. Open the Web activity containing the e-Marketing Spot that to experiment with.

  3. In the palette, expand the Branching section.

  4. Drag an Experiment element onto the flow connector immediately to the left of the e-Marketing Spot element that 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.

  5. Click the Experiment element.

  6. Enter the experiment properties:

    Option 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 may 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 may 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 will participate in the experiment. If you do not specify the maximum number of customers, 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 has not been reached, then they will be assigned to a path according to the branch type. Once the maximum number of customers is reached, those customers already participating in the experiment will continue along their assigned path. New customers will not be allowed to 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 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 will run as soon as the Web activity is activated.
    End Date Define an end date and time for the experiment. You can either enter a date in the field, or select a date 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, specify the maximum number of customers.
    Session length

    The amount of time from when a customer was displayed something in an e-Marketing Spot to the time of their order to say the display influenced their purchase. 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 may be assigned a different test element in the experiment.

    Status Select the status of the experiment. You can select either Running or Suspended.

  7. Click the Paths tab, and enter each path's properties:

    Option 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 represents the frequency that a particular path will display. For example, if a path is defined at 50%, it will display 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 Use 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 Use table views.

  8. Optional: You can add additional 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.

  9. Click the e-Marketing Spot element in the experiment path. The properties for the element display.

  10. 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.

  11. Click Save to save the activity, or click Save and 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 a shipping promotion.


Related concepts

Marketing experiments


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