Optimizely Commerce Connect API overview

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Note
Sample code used in this article is taken from Quicksilver templates. The Quicksilver Commerce Connect sample site and installation instructions are available to download from GitHub.

For environment settings, see Install and configure the native integration package.

The following diagram illustrates how Optimizely Product Recommendations operates in both tracking modes:

Server-side integration API

The EPiServer.Tracking.Core package contains:

The EPiServer.Tracking.Core.ITrackingService interface.

The EPiServer.Tracking.Commerce package contains:

The EPiServer.Tracking.Commerce.TrackingServiceExtensions class.
The EPiServer.Tracking.Commerce.CommerceTrackingAttribute class.
The EPiServer.Tracking.Commerce.TrackingDataFactory class.

Client-side integration API

The EPiServer.Personalization.Commerce package contains:

The epiRecommendations JavaScript object — used to send a tracking request with client-collected tracking data and render the tracking response.
The TrackingDataFactory JavaScript object — collects tracking data from the client.

Mark clicks

If a user clicks a recommended item, the click must be tracked to generate useful recommendations. To get information about which recommendation triggered the current request, use the EPiServer.Tracking.Commerce.IRecommendationContext interface.

The Quicksilver template includes a class, EPiServer.Reference.Commerce.Site.Features.Recommendations.Services.RecommendationContext, that implements IRecommendationContext for tracking clicks on recommended products.

Define recommendation layout on a page

To render recommendations, create four sections on a page: upper, left, right, and bottom.

recommendations-upper
recommendations-left
recommendations-right
recommendations-bottom

Based on their CSS classes, recommendations are rendered to the upper, left, right, and bottom areas of a page's main content.

In Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml, add four <div> tags, one for each section:

<div class="recommendations recommendations-upper"></div>
<div class="recommendations recommendations-left"></div>
<div class="recommendations recommendations-right"></div>
<div class="recommendations recommendations-bottom"></div>

The result inside the layout structure looks like the following:

@{ Html.RenderAction("Index", "Navigation"); }
<div class="quicksilver site-wrapper">
    <div class="main-area">@RenderBody()</div>
    <div class="recommendations recommendations-upper"></div>
    <div class="recommendations recommendations-left"></div>
    <div class="recommendations recommendations-right"></div>
    <div class="recommendations recommendations-bottom"></div>
</div>
@{ Html.RenderAction("Index", "Footer"); }