1. Using Oracle CX Commerce Experiments
  2. Configure Experiments
  3. Configure the goals

Configure the goals

You can configure the default metric goals for the experiment, and you can create custom goals. Oracle Experiments also enables you to create custom events as goals, and customize the Pageview track type goal.

You can configure goals by clicking on the Goals button in the experiment configuration header panel to display the goal configuration panel.

Note: Clicking outside the goals configuration panel will close the panel without saving any changes you have made.

By default, there are four commerce metrics that are tracked for each experiment. These are:

  • Add to Cart: This tracks the impact of the experiment on the likelihood of a customer adding a product to their cart. It does this by dividing the number of unique visitors who add an item to their cart by the total number of unique visitors who participated in the experiment.
  • Conversion: This tracks the impact of the experiment on the conversion rate. It does this by dividing the number of unique visitors who completed an order by the total number of unique visitors who participated in the experiment.
  • Average Order Value: This tracks the impact of the experiment on the average order value of each visitor during their participation in the experiment. It does this by dividing the total revenue for all orders placed by participants on the control path by the number of orders placed by participants on the control path, and comparing that value to the total revenue for all orders placed by participants on the variant path divided by the number of orders placed by participants on the variant path. When displayed in the results of the experiment, this metric is segmented by the currency in which the transaction occurred to ensure equivalence.
  • Revenue per Visitor: This tracks the impact of the experiment on the revenue per visitor participating in the experiment. It does this by dividing the total revenue for all orders placed by participants on the control path by the number of participants on the control path, and comparing that value to the total revenue for all orders placed by participants on the variant path by the number of participants on the variant path. When displayed in the results of the experiment, this metric is segmented by the currency in which the transaction occurred to ensure equivalence.

Configure custom goals

Click on the New Custom Goal to configure a custom goal. You can also open this part of the goal configuration panel by clicking on an element and selecting Track Click Goal from the element configuration panel.

The configurable options include:

  • Goal Name: This is the name of the goal. It can be up to 100 characters long and must be not be the same as any other goals configured for this experiment.
  • Track Type: This allows you to define how the goal is tracked. There are two options available from this dropdown. These options are:
    • Click: This tracks whether the visitor clicked on a specified element.
    • Pageview: This tracks whether the customer visited a specified URL.
    • Commerce Event: This allows you to track events as custom goals and is available for all experiments. You can select events from a default list that is refined and maintained within the Experiments application. You can also define custom events from within the goal configuration panel.

Note for those non-default custom events specified as a goal, for example, if you would like an event for loyalty card sign-up, you are required to create the code that will trigger the event. For more information, see Customize the Commerce Events track type goal below, and/or Create new topics in Developing Widgets.

The other elements displayed in the goal configuration panel depend on whether you selected Click or Pageview from the Track Type dropdown.

When you have finished configuring the custom goal, click on the Create button to return to the main goal configuration panel. If there is more than one goal in the goal list, you can define which goal is the primary goal by clicking the star for the appropriate goal. The primary goal is the one for which results are displayed in the results summary on the Experiments dashboard. By default, the Add to Cart commerce metric is set as the primary goal.

If no schedule has yet been defined for the experiment, you can also edit or delete a custom goal by selecting the appropriate option from the action cog beside the custom goal. For more information on editing a goal, please refer to the Edit an experiment section of this document.

Customize the Commerce Events track type goal

You are required to create and manually add custom events as goals. Once added, Oracle Experiments will store the event name and use it in the list of default custom events within the Commerce Events drop down.

Custom events can be created for use in Oracle Experiments, as shown in the following example:$.Topic(<EVENT-NAME>).publish(<DATA-AS-OBJ>) ;

Note that you are not required to pass anything through as part of the publish event. For instance, when both the inline and modal methods access the code that is used to apply a coupon to the cart, then it is within that particular code that the custom event is published. The following example illustrates this:$.Topic("CheckoutCouponApplied").publish() ;

Similarly, if you were to run an experiment for removing an item from a basket at checkout as another example. Again, when both the link and the button methods access the code that is used to remove an item from the cart, then it is within that particular code that the custom event is published. The following example illustrates this:$.Topic("ItemRemovedAtCheckout").publish() ;

For both examples, you can track the custom event CheckoutCouponApplied, or ItemRemovedAtCheckout, within your experiment. Oracle Experiments will track each time the events occur.

The publish event does not need to occur on the actual page that is displayed as the control or variant of the experiment, it can occur on any page and is logged against any experiments entered before the event was fired. In many cases, you will be able to select from the list of default events. You should continue to check which events are fired for the particular actions of interest.

Customize the Click track type goal

If you select Click from the Track Type dropdown, you can click on the Make Selection button to define which element you want the goal to track.

When you click the Make Selection button, the goal configuration panel retracts and the experiment control page is displayed. You can select any type of element selected, except a page body, or HTML tag, on the variant page to make that the tracked element for this goal.

If the element you wish to track is on another web page, you can navigate to that page by clicking the Interactive button

interactive button

and navigating to the webpage containing the element you wish to track. You can do this by entering a URL in the Goal URL field in the experiment configuration header panel and then clicking the Reload button.

You can also navigate to the webpage containing the element you wish to track by clicking on hyperlinks displayed in the variant window.

Once you are on the webpage that contains the element you wish to track, you must click the Edit button.

You can now select the element you wish to track for this goal. You can select any hyperlink, anchor tag, input element, image or button. Once you have made your selection, click on the Selection Complete button to return to the goal panel.

Note: If you choose to track an element on another page, the URL for the page containing that element is displayed in the Goal URL field on the goal configuration panel.

When you have finished configuring a goal you can save your changes by clicking on the Create button. If you click on the Cancel button, the goal you configured is discarded and you are returned to the goal list.

Customize the Pageview track type goal

If you select Pageview from the Track Type dropdown, there are two further fields displayed in the goal configuration panel. These fields are:

  • URL to Track: This is used to define the URL for which Pageview is tracked by the goal.
  • Match Type: This is used to define which type of match will be performed against the URL specified in the URL field. The options available are:
    • Exact Match: This checks whether the visitor goes to a page where the URL matches exactly with the URL entered here.
    • Starts With: This checks whether the visitor goes to a page where the URL starts with the value entered here.
    • Contains: This checks whether the visitor goes to a page where the URL contains the string specified in the URL field.
    • Regular Expression: This checks whether the visitor goes to a page where the URL matches the RegEx specified in the URL field.

When you have finished configuring a goal, you can save your changes by clicking on the Create button. If you click on the Cancel button, the goal you configured is discarded and you are returned to the goal list.