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Optimizely Web Destination

Optimizely Web Destination

Destination Info

Accepts Page, Identify, and Track calls
In Device-mode, refer to it as Optimizely in the Integrations object

Components

Connection Modes

Device-mode	Cloud-mode
Web	Web
Mobile	Mobile
Server	Server

Getting Started

Segment’s Optimizely Web (previously Optimizely) destination supports the following Optimizely products:

Optimizely X Web
Optimizely Full Stack (JavaScript)

If you’re interested in implementing Optimizely Full Stack server-side or on mobile, see Segment’s Optimizely Full Stack destination, which supports:

Use Cases

Optimizing page performance using heatmaps

Test which call to action (CTA) results in more shopping cart conversions with Optimizely and Amplitude.

Implementation Prerequisite

Optimizely works differently than other Segment destinations: Because the Optimizely Web Snippet and Full Stack SDKs are used to modify and deliver experiences to users, they generally must be implemented at a point in your Website or app that allows them to make visual modifications in-time for users.

Because of this Optimizely requires that customers implement their Web Snippet and SDKs natively, before the Segment snippet or implementation.

Although Segment maps track, and in some cases page, events to Optimizely’s custom events, customers must implement the snippet on their site to ensure that experiments run and Optimizely decision events can be sent to Optimizely and Segment.

Segment provides specific implementation details for each Optimizely product in the sections below, in addition to details of the out-of-the-box mappings Segment’s Optimizely component handles for Optimizely users.

Optimizely X Web

Getting Started

In your Segment source dashboard, enable the “Optimizely Web” destination (not the “Optimizely Full Stack” destination).
In Optimizely, go to the project you want to set the integration for. Then navigate to Settings -> Implementation and select the snippet to include on your Web page.
In your Optimizely dashboard, copy the snippet provided at the bottom of the page.
Include the snippet immediately after the opening <head> tag on every page where you’d like to include Optimizely’s JavaScript.
Now, paste your Segment snippet below the Optimizely snippet on every page where you’d like to include Segment’s JavaScript.
Finally, remember to define any custom events in your Optimizely dashboard, and to add those events as metrics with the appropriate Optimizely Experiments. In Optimizely in the Implementation tab, select ‘Custom Event’ and give it an API name that corresponds to the Segment track event name. Once the Optimizely events are created, they can be added to experiments as metrics to start tracking Segment data to an Optimizely experiment.

Track

Behind the scenes, Segment’s Optimizely Web destination creates a global Optimizely queue on the page. Upon invocation of a Segment track event, Segment pushes the track event to the global queue.

Segment forwards the event to Optimizely:

If the Segment event name matches exactly the name of an active experiment metric set up in the Optimizely dashboard;
If the experiment metric is associated with a running experiment;
If the current user has been assigned a userId using Segment’s identify method (e.g. analytics.identify('123'));
If the current user is activated in a running experiment with the associated metric.

Segment also handles the following mapping:

Segment track event name to Optimizely eventName.
Segment track event properties to Optimizely eventTags.

revenue values should be passed as a Segment property. The value should be an integer and represent the value in cents, so, for example, $1 should be represented by 100.

Note: Custom Event Tags in Optimizely, which include all Event Tags except revenue and value, are not displayed on the Optimizely results page, however, they are available in a Data Export report.

Page

Segment maps page calls to its own track events, i.e. invoking analytics.page('Page Viewed') using Segment’s API maps the event to a analytics.track('Page Viewed') event. Segment maps the track event to other downstream destinations like a regular Segment track event.

Experiment Listeners

Upon activation of an Optimizely experiment, an “Experiment Viewed” track event is sent to Segment. The event includes Optimizely experiment metadata.

Upon activation of an Optimizely experiment, an “Experiment Viewed” track event is sent to Segment. The event includes Optimizely experiment metadata which is sent whenever the Optimizely campaignDecided listener is activated.

Note: When an Optimizely Web experiment is activated, Optimizely automatically sends an “Experiment Viewed” track event to Segment. This makes the Optimizely Web integration act as both a Destination and a Source, because the track calls enrich and send Experiment Decisions and Exposure event data to Segment, which can be used by other platforms.

Standard or Redirect Experiments

Properties sent using track calls:

campaignName
campaignId
experimentId
experimentName
referrer (only set if the effective referrer is different than document.referrer)
variationName
variationId
audienceId
audienceName
nonInteraction (based on your advanced settings inside Segment)

campaignName and experimentName are the same if you create an experiment directly rather than creating an “experience” inside a personalized campaign. However, campaignId is still auto generated by Optimizely’s API, thus it is different than the experimentId.

example-settings

Example call automatically invoked upon page load:

analytics.track('Experiment Viewed', {
  campaignName: 'Countdown to Stranger Things 2',
  campaignId: '7554165405',
  experimentId: '7556781578',
  experimentName: 'What about Barbs?',
  variationId: '7578240035',
  variationName: 'Variation Barbs',
  audienceId: '7527565438',
  audienceName: 'Netflix Bingers',
  nonInteraction: 1
});

Trait sent using identify calls:

experimentName
variationName

Example call automatically invoked upon page load:

analytics.identify({
  'Experiment: What about Barbs?': 'Variation Barbs'
});

Since traits are cached, if you run multiple experiments during a user session subsequent experiments would fire identify calls containing previous experiment data.

Sending Experiment Viewed events as Non-Interaction for Google Analytics

If you’re using Google Analytics, you’ll likely want to check this setting in the Segment UI for the Optimizely Web destination:

non-interaction-flag-setting

This appends an additional property in your “Experiment Viewed” events called nonInteraction and set it to 1. This is to prevent the “Experiment Viewed” event from affecting your bounce rate.

Sending Experiment Viewed event properties as Google Analytics Custom Dimensions

If you’re sending your experiment data to Google Analytics in the form of track calls, Segment recommends creating hit-scoped custom dimensions in Google Analytics with titles like “Experiment Name” and “Variation Name,” and then map the properties to those Custom Dimensions accordingly. For example, if you set Custom Dimension 5 to “Experiment Name” and Custom Dimension 1 to “Variation Name,” here’s how you’d configure the mappings in your Segment<>GA settings:

A screenshot of the Custom Dimensions tab of Optimzely.

Optimizely Full Stack (JavaScript SDK)

Getting Started

In your Segment source dashboard, enable the “Optimizely Web” destination (not the “Optimizely Full Stack” destination).
Require Optimizely’s @optimizely/optimizely-sdk on your site and create an optimizelyClientInstance.
The instance must be named optimizelyClientInstance.
Attach the optimizelyClientInstance to the window so Segment recognizes it.
Now, paste your Segment snippet below the Optimizely implementation on every page where you’d like to include Segment’s JavaScript. Or, if you’ve implemented Optimizely in a separate file, ensure Segment loads only after Optimizely has been initialized.
Finally, define any events and attributes in your Optimizely dashboard, and to associate metrics with the appropriate Optimizely Experiments. Segment maps track event names to Optimizely eventName - the eventName corresponds to an experiment metric.

Note: If you are using Optimizely SDKs v1.x or v2.x: if a visitor has any activate or isFeatureEnabled calls, their attributes object for these calls must match the attributes object passed to any track calls for that user id so that it can be correctly attributed on the Optimizely results page.

If you are using Optimizely SDKs v3+ or the React SDK, Easy Event Tracking is enabled by default for decision events. Set up does not require maintaining the attributes of a user as long as the user id stays the same between Optimizely activate and isFeatureEnabled calls and Segment track calls to have Optimizely metrics populated in the Optimizely results page. If you would like to segment your Optimizely results by user attribute, then make sure the attributes passed in for the activate and isFeatureEnabled calls match the attributes passed in for the track calls for that user id.

For more details on how events are attributed on the Optimizely results page, refer to their documentation here.

Track

Upon invocation of a Segment track event, Segment maps the event to an Optimizely track event:

If the Segment event name matches exactly the name of an active experiment metric set up in the Optimizely dashboard;
If the experiment metric is associated with a running experiment;
If the current user has been assigned a userId using Segment’s identify method (e.g. analytics.identify('123'));
If the current user is activated in a running experiment with the associated metric.

Segment also handles the following mapping:

Segment track event name to Optimizely eventName.
Segment track event properties to Optimizely eventTags.
Segment track event traits, falling back to cached user traits, to Optimizely attributes.

revenue values should be passed as a Segment property. The value should be an integer and represent the value in cents, so, for example, $1 should be represented by 100.

Note: Custom Event Tags in Optimizely, which includes any Event Tag outside of revenue or value, will not be displayed on the Optimizely results page, however, they will be available in a Data Export report.

Page

Segment maps page calls to its own track events, i.e. invoking analytics.page("Page Viewed") using Segment’s API maps the event to analytics.track("Page Viewed"). Segment maps the track event downstream to other destinations like a regular Segment track event.

Experiment Listeners

Segment does not implement experiment listeners for Optimizely X Full Stack.

Tracking Anonymous Data with Optimizely X Full Stack

If you are sending anonymous data to Optimizely X Full Stack using their server-side SDK elsewhere and would like to send anonymous data for the same user using this Segment client-side component, you can pass in an Optimizely-specific userId:

  analytics.track('Some event', { /* properties */ }, {
    Optimizely: { userId: 'some anonymousId' }
  });

Troubleshooting

No Data for Anonymous Users

Segment does not map any data to Optimizely from the Segment<>Optimizely Web destination for anonymous users - in other words, to map track and page data, a user must be identified with a userId.

Lower Experiment Viewed counts inside Segment and other tools vs. Optimizely unique visitors

The count of “Experiment Viewed” events may be slightly lower compared to the number of unique visitors seen in Optimizely because Optimizely loads synchronously and Segment loads asynchronously. This means that if the user quickly closes or redirects from a page, sometimes Segment does not have enough time to scrape the experiment data from the global Optimizely object and make its API calls back to Segment and to your other enabled tools.

Sending Segment event ‘properties’ as Optimizely ‘events’

If you follow the Segment recommended naming conventions for track calls, you might not automatically capture the specificity of the conversion event that you want to for the Optimizely eventName. For example, you might see a Segment track event with the eventName “Category Clicked”, with additional important details about the event is stored in the Segment event’s properties. However, you want to send an event to Optimizely with the eventName “Clicked Shirts” . Here is an example of that Segment event:

analytics.track('Category Clicked', {
  category: 'Shirts',
  productId: '1234',
  productName: 'Red Cotton T-shirt',
  price: 23.95
});

If you were to send this Segment track event to Optimizely using any of the Segment integrations, you would only be able to use the eventName ‘Click’ as a metric in Optimizely since custom event tags in Optimizely are not available on the Results page.

To send a track event from Segment with the context about that event from the properties to Optimizely, create a custom Segment Destination Function that maps the Segment eventName to a more specific Optimizely eventName and send an Optimizely event payload with the transformed eventName to the Optimizely Event API. Using the example above, the Segment track event ‘Click’ can be transformed to an Optimizely event with the eventName ‘Clicked Shirt’.

Sending effective referrer in your automatic page calls

If you are running redirect experiments, you might run into a case where the effective referrer is different than the referrer that is captured by page calls, such as the default page call in our Segment snippet.

For example, let’s say you run a redirect experiment on page http://home.com that redirects you to http://home-offers.com. Now, if a customer visits your page using a Google ad, you want to make sure that the page call fired on http://home-offers.com knows that the true referrer was Google and NOT http://home.com.

Our Optimizely Web destination detects this and send the effective referrer value as a property of the subsequent Experiment Viewed. Segment also overrides the context.page.referrer with the effective referrer.

More importantly, to send the true referrer value with the initial page call inside the Segment snippet, you can look up window.optimizelyEffectiveReferrer, and if it exists, you can pass that into your page call. This is how you might modify your Segment snippet to pass the extra code inside ready() so its only called after Optimizely SDK has finished loading:

<script>
  !function(){var i="analytics",analytics=window[i]=window[i]||[];if(!analytics.initialize)if(analytics.invoked)window.console&&console.error&&console.error("Segment snippet included twice.");else{analytics.invoked=!0;analytics.methods=["trackSubmit","trackClick","trackLink","trackForm","pageview","identify","reset","group","track","ready","alias","debug","page","screen","once","off","on","addSourceMiddleware","addIntegrationMiddleware","setAnonymousId","addDestinationMiddleware","register"];analytics.factory=function(e){return function(){if(window[i].initialized)return window[i][e].apply(window[i],arguments);var n=Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments);if(["track","screen","alias","group","page","identify"].indexOf(e)>-1){var c=document.querySelector("link[rel='canonical']");n.push({__t:"bpc",c:c&&c.getAttribute("href")||void 0,p:location.pathname,u:location.href,s:location.search,t:document.title,r:document.referrer})}n.unshift(e);analytics.push(n);return analytics}};for(var n=0;n<analytics.methods.length;n++){var key=analytics.methods[n];analytics[key]=analytics.factory(key)}analytics.load=function(key,n){var t=document.createElement("script");t.type="text/javascript";t.async=!0;t.setAttribute("data-global-segment-analytics-key",i);t.src="https://cdn.segment.com/analytics.js/v1/" + key + "/analytics.min.js";var r=document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];r.parentNode.insertBefore(t,r);analytics._loadOptions=n};analytics._writeKey="YOUR_WRITE_KEY";;analytics.SNIPPET_VERSION="5.2.1"; 


  analytics.ready(function() {
    /* MODIFIED SECTION */
  // Hey did Optimizely set an effective referrer?
  if (window.optimizelyEffectiveReferrer) var referrer = window.optimizelyEffectiveReferrer;

  // If they did, override the document.referrer
  referrer ? analytics.page({ referrer: referrer }):analytics.page();
  /* MODIFIED SECTION */
  });
  }}();
</script>

Settings

Segment lets you change these destination settings from the Segment app without having to touch any code.

Setting	Description
Custom Campaign Properties	`text-map`, defaults to {}. Map here the properties from your event that want to pass to Optimizely as part of the Campaign. The keys for the map correspond to Segment’s properties, and the values the Campaign properties. For example, `source -> campaign_name`.
Custom Experiment Properties	`text-map`, defaults to {}. Map here the properties from your event that want to pass to Optimizely as part of the Experiment. The keys for the map correspond to Segment’s properties, and the values the Experiment properties. For example, `color -> experiment_color`.
Send experiment data to other tools (as a track call)	`boolean`, defaults to `TRUE` . Sends the experiment and variation information as properties on a track call.
Send `Experiment Viewed` as a non-interaction event	`boolean`, defaults to `TRUE` . Specifies the `Experiment Viewed` as a non-interaction event for Google Analytics
Send `properties.revenue` only on `Order Completed` events (recommended)	`boolean`, defaults to `TRUE` . This is Optimizely expected behavior. This will send revenue only on `Order Completed` events.
Track Categorized Pages	`boolean`, defaults to `TRUE` . This will track events to Optimizely for `page` method calls that have a `category` associated with them. For example `page('Docs', 'Index')` would translate to Viewed Docs Page.
Track Named Pages	`boolean`, defaults to `TRUE` . This will track events to Optimizely for `page` method calls that have either a `name` or `category` associated with them. For example `page('Signup', 'Home')` would translate to Viewed Home Signup Page.
Send experiment data to other tools as an identify call (not recommended)	`boolean`, defaults to `FALSE` . The reason this is not recommended is because if you’re running lots of experiments, this could lead to loads of unwanted properties in end tools as well as unwanted columns in Segment connected databases.

This page was last modified: 19 Jan 2024

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