Optimizely Web Experimentation
Send your event data from RudderStack to Optimizely Web.
Optimizely Web Experimentation (formerly Optimizely Web) lets you you test and experiment new features on your website. It is typically used by marketing teams and product managers to learn more about the customers’ product journey, and test new features to boost conversion rates and overall customer engagement.
Connection compatibility
Based on your website’s content security policy, you might need to
allowlist the domain from where you are loading the Optimizely Web SDK.
Get started
Once you have confirmed that the source platform supports sending events to Optimizely Web Experimentation, follow these steps:
- Define custom events in the Optimizely Dashboard and add those events as metrics in the corresponding experiments.
- Add the Optimizely Web Experimentation snippet to your web page immediately after the opening
<head>
tag. Then, include the RudderStack JavaScript snippet. - From your RudderStack dashboard, add the source. Then, from the list of destinations, select Optimizely Web.
- Assign a name to your destination and click Continue.
Connection settings
To successfully configure Optimizely Web Experimentation as a destination, you will need to configure the following settings:
- Send experiment data to other tools: By enabling this setting, you can send your experiment or campaign data to other destinations connected to the same source.
- As a track call: When this setting is enabled, an
Experiment Viewed
track
event will be sent to RudderStack along with other configured destinations for each active experiments per page load. The properties
of this event will be Optimizely’s experiment metadata. - As identify call: When this setting is enabled, an
identify
call will be sent to RudderStack and other configured destinations, with the traits as experiment name
and variation name
.
- Send experiment viewed event as non-interaction event: In case you want to send the
Experiment Viewed
track event to Google Analytics, enable this setting. The track
event will then be sent to Google Analytics as a non-interaction event, i.e. an additional property nonInteraction
with value 1
will be appended to the properties of that event. - Revenue on Order Completed event: Enabling this setting will send
revenue
as a property of the track
only for the events with event name Order Completed
. - Track categorized pages: Enabling this setting will send
page
calls to Optimizely Web having category
as track
events. - Track named pages: Enabling this will send
page
calls having name
as track
events to Optimizely Web. - Custom campaign properties: In this section, provide the mapping of the campaign metadata to the RudderStack
track
event properties for the Experiment Viewed
event. Please note that the event property
should be the track
event property and the campaign property
should be the corresponding metadata of the campaign. - Client-side Events Filtering: This setting lets you specify which events should be blocked or allowed to flow through to Optimizely Web Experimentation. For more information on this setting, refer to the Client-side Events Filtering guide.
- Use device mode to send events: As this is a web device mode-only destination, this setting is enabled by default and cannot be disabled.
- OneTrust Cookie Categories: This setting lets you associate OneTrust cookie consent groups to Optimizely.
Page
If you have enabled the Track Categorized Pages or Track Named Pages dashboarding setting, then RudderStack sends a page
call having a name or category as a track
event with the event name as Viewed ${category} page
or Viewed ${name} page
to Optimizely.
A sample page
call is shown below:
// "home" is the name of the page.
rudderanalytics.page("home");
Track
RudderStack sends a track
call to Optimizely with a valid event name associated with an active experiment.
If you have enabled the Revenue on Order Completed event dashboard setting, then RudderStack sends the revenue
property only for the Order Completed
event and not for any other event.
RudderStack converts the value of revenue
to cents before passing it to Optimizely. Thus, $5 will be converted to 500 cents.
If Revenue on Order Completed event is disabled in the dashboard, then the property is passed as is, without any conversion.
A sample track
call is as shown below:
rudderanalytics.track("Order Completed", {
revenue: 30,
value: 30.0,
})
Sending experiment data
If the Send experiment data as track call dashboard setting is enabled while configuring the destination, RudderStack automatically records and sends a web experiment as a track
event with Experiment Viewed
as the event name and the experiment metadata as the event properties.
You can then send this track
event to the other destinations (connected to the same source in RudderStack) to analyze the experimentation results.
This track
event call consists of the following properties:
campaignName
campaignId
experimentId
experimentName
variationName
variationId
audienceId
audienceName
nonInteraction
If you provide the custom campaign properties in the destination settings, then the campaign metadata key will be overridden by the corresponding event properties.
A sample track
call is shown below:
rudderanalytics.track("Experiment Viewed", {
campaignName: "test campaign",
campaignId: "1234567890",
experimentId: "0123456789",
experimentName: "test experiment",
variationId: "1122334455",
variationName: "test variation",
audienceId: "1212121212",
audienceName: "sample audience",
nonInteraction: 1,
})
If the Send experiment data as identify call dashboard setting is enabled, RudderStack sends an identify
event with the following traits for each active experiment:
experimentName
variationName
You can then send this identify
event to the other destinations (connected to the same source in RudderStack) to analyze the experimentation results.
Note that:
- In case multiple experiments are active, then multiple
identify
events are triggered. - RudderStack persists the
identify
traits for the subsequent identify
calls, that is, the identify
calls contain the previous identify
traits as well.
A sample identify
call is as shown:
rudderanalytics.identify({
`Experiment: ${experimentName}` : variationName
});
FAQ
Do I need to add Optimizely Web’s JavaScript snippet to my website?
Yes. You need to add the Optimizely Web snippet immediately after the opening <head>
tag of your web page. Then, include the JavaScript snippet of RudderStack.
Why I am not able to see the events in my experiments?
Define the custom events
in Optimizely Web’s dashboard and add those events as metrics
in corresponding Optimizely ’s experiment
.
While defining the custom event, you need to provide an API Name
and while using RudderStack’s track
API, use this API name
as the event name
.
Questions? Contact us by email or on
Slack