Integrate Adobe Analytics

Optimizely Web Experimentation's integration with Adobe Analytics lets you view the analytics details for visitors who have seen a specific variation of your Optimizely Web Experimentation experiment or a specific experience of your Optimizely Web Personalization campaign.

Enable in Optimizely Web Experimentation

1. Enable the integration for your Optimizely Web Experimentation project.
2. Go to an individual experiment or Optimizely Web Personalization campaign you want to track in Adobe Analytics.
3. Click Integrations under Manage Campaign.
4. Select the custom conversion variables (eVar) you want Optimizely Web Experimentation to use under Conversion Variables. The eVar should not be used by another part of your site or a concurrently running Optimizely Web Experimentation experiment.
5. Add an sVariable (optional). Some sites use custom Adobe Analytics implementations with special sVariable names. The sVariable contains all of the tracking tags sent to Adobe Analytics for a given visitor. If you want to specify a custom sVariable, you can do so in the corresponding field when setting up the integration on an experiment level. If the parameter is omitted, Optimizely Web Experimentation uses s by default.

Check the custom report for your experiment

After you have enabled the integration, check the custom Adobe Analytics report for your experiment to ensure it works. A dashboard displays when you log in to your account.

You can find the custom variable with these steps:

1. Select Custom Conversion > Custom Conversion XX-XX > Optimizely (vXX). The XX represents the eVar you selected when you enabled the Optimizely Web Experimentation integration.

2. Click the Optimizely Web Experimentation custom conversion to go to the custom report.

3. Click Add Metrics to check how specific custom events perform across variations.

4. Drag the custom event you want to display from the Available Metrics list to the Report Data Columns Canvas list to add it to the report.

5. Click OK when finished. You should see a modified report showing the custom event's conversion data.

If you are using Optimizely Web Personalization, filter the report for the words holdback to see only the data from visitors included in your Optimizely Web Personalization campaign. Optimizely Web Personalization also tracks events for visitors included in the campaign holdback. See Naming conventions for Third-party integrations.

Set up a custom conversion variable

With custom conversion variables (eVars) in Adobe Analytics, you can capture conversion events or other attributes specific to your webpage. Like custom variables in Google Analytics, you can use custom conversion variables to segment your reports for deeper analysis. When combined with integration in Optimizely Web Experimentation, eVars let you segment your reports by your experiments and identify the best-performing variation.

When an Optimizely Web Experimentation decision event fires, Optimizely Web Experimentation sends an event to Adobe with the eVar. This allows you to create a report based on a specific eVar value.

To reserve an eVar for your Optimizely Web Experimentation experiment:

1. Go to Report Suite Manager in Adobe Analytics.
2. Select Edit Settings > Conversions > Conversion Variables.

3. Click Add New eVar.

After adding your new eVar, choose a unique name, allocation type, cookie expiration, data type, and relation status. The default values are recommended:

• Allocation: Most Recent (Last)
• Expire After: Visit
• Type: Text String
• Status: Basic Subrelations

Allocation determines which eVar value associates with a given visitor. If the visitor happens to trigger multiple events, for example, you might want to attribute this to the last value they were assigned. This attributes the revenue and participation metrics to the final value. Choosing Linear allocation divides the revenue and success goals evenly over all events. If you want to view your success events across multiple eVar values, you can do that with participation.

Troubleshoot your integration

Tools to help verify things are working correctly

Here are some tools to help debug an Adobe Analytics integration:

• A Chrome Browser extension that detects when a tracking call has been made and what values have been sent along with it.
• An Adobe DigitalPulse Debugger that uses a JavaScript bookmarklet to pop-up information about the Adobe Analytics implementation on a page when run

Identify the Adobe Analytics tracking call

The default implementation of Adobe Analytics uses this code to send a tracking call:

s.t();

This function call sends out all Adobe Analytics tracking information for the pageview. By default, Optimizely Web Experimentation assumes this is s,  but this tracking call may have a different leading variable that is not s if you are using a custom tracker name. If you cannot find a s.t(); call on your page, search for anything resembling .t() in case another call exists with a different leading variable name before the period.

When a decision event is made, Optimizely Web Experimentation sends that event to Adobe Analytics as soon as possible, polling for the availability of the Adobe Analytics object. If the Adobe Analytics object is not ready when a decision is made, Optimizely checks back every 200 MS for 10 seconds to see if Optimizely Web Experimentation can send the Adobe Analytics string. This helps with delayed activation experiments (and if they fall under delayed activation, it also helps with geo-targeted experiments).

Identify a Custom Tracker (sVariable)

This step is optional if you use a default Adobe Analytics implementation. If you notice a different variable name other than s before the period for the .t() tracking call, that is the name of your custom sVariable. For example:

foo.t();

The custom s variable name in this example is foo, so you must modify your integration settings to reflect this.

This is an example of an integration that's working for a custom tracker named omntag:

This is an example of the s object omntag when Optimizely Web Experimentation populates eVar1 correctly:

Access to eVar/prop variables 50 through 100

Some older versions of Adobe Analytics do not work with all 100 eVar and prop variables available for assignment within Optimizely Web Experimentation.

Access to variable slots 51 through 75 was added in Adobe Analytics Code Version H22 (pre-SiteCatalyst 15). You can find your Adobe Analytics Code Version number with the DigitalPulse Debugger tool. If you have an older version, limit your eVar and prop variables to 1 through 50 within Optimizely Web Experimentation.

Access to variable slots 76 through 100 was added later, but if you’re having trouble populating them, try an eVar or prop in the range of 1 to 50 to see if that helps.