Enhanced redirect analytics in Optimizely Web Experimentation

  • Updated
This topic describes how to:
  • Run redirect experiments across origins
  • Track events and visitors of a redirect experiment in third-party analytics

In response to a redirect event tracking issue, we updated how Optimizely Web Experimentation tracks data across origins for redirect experiments. When performing a redirect, the snippet can now store information about the campaign decision in a cookie, allowing the snippet on the post-redirect page to track the decision to various analytics back ends.

If you are using enhanced redirect analytics, you will see this dialog when using the redirect feature:

enhanced-redirect-analytics.png

Supported redirects and analytics integrations

Enhanced redirect tracking supports redirects from:

  • One origin to another within a single cookie domain

  • One snippet to another, even between unlinked projects, as long as the two snippets are in the same account.

Additional configuration may be necessary when redirecting from one snippet to another.

Enhanced redirect tracking also supports analytics tracking with:

Unsupported redirects and analytics integrations

Enhanced redirect tracking does not support redirects from one cookie domain to another.

Enhanced redirect tracking also does not support analytics tracking with Clicktale. If you use enhanced redirect tracking with Clicktale analytics tracking, you may not see any visitors in the redirect variation.

Third-party analytics and redirecting to a page with a different snippet

We do not include code for all possible integrations in every snippet. That would waste bandwidth and slow your page load time. Instead, we add integration code to the snippet when you enable an integration for a project or experiment.

If you are using a third-party analytics integration and redirecting to a page with a different Optimizely Web Experimentation snippet in your account, the post-redirect snippet needs to have the analytics integrations enabled separately. This means if you intend to track the redirect experiment using a tool like Google Analytics, the snippet on the page you are redirecting to needs to also have the Google Analytics integration enabled. Because integrations are typically enabled on a per-experiment basis, this could mean the post-redirect snippet does not know about the redirect experiment and its integration settings.

Here are a few suggestions for working around this constraint:

  • Enable the integration for all experiments in the project where the post-redirect snippet lives (this option is not available for all integrations)

  • If there is already an experiment running in that snippet that is using the integration, the redirect should work properly, although you might experience issues like another user pausing the test before yours is complete

  • Create an A/A test for that post-redirect page's snippet where you use the Google Analytics integration

Debugging the redirect cookie

Append ?optimizely_log=debug to your URL and open the developer console in your browser. Search the log for a line containing Optly / Relay / Found redirect cookie. That line contains the cookie information. The cookie is set on pre-redirect page and the Optimizely Web Experimentation log is reading and printing it from the post-redirect page.

If you parse the cookie information by "&" you can review the data passed from the pre-redirect page to the post-redirect page.

Relayed field name Purpose More info
a Account ID  
aId Activation ID  
as Audience IDs  
cV X Web client version  
d Decision ID  
i Visitor ID  
isv Integration string version Indicates the analytics naming convention
l Campaign ID  
lN Campaign Name Unavailable if masking descriptive names
lP Campaign Policy  
n Snippet Revision  
ns localStorage Key Namespace  
p Project ID  
r Referrer Empty string if the referrer couldn't be determined on the pre-redirect page
s Session ID  
t Time since Unix epoch Use a converter if you want a more readable timestamp
v Variation ID  
vN Variation Name Unavailable if masking descriptive names
x Experiment ID  
xN Experiment Name Unavailable if masking descriptive names

Third-party analytics

If you are expecting results via one of the supported third-party analytics integrations, you need to make sure the integration is included in the post-redirect snippet even though that the integration may not be explicitly enabled for any campaign or experiment in that snippet.