Not seeing the right experience in a campaign

  • Updated
  • Optimizely Web Experimentation
  • Optimizely Web Personalization

Are you experiencing any of the following issues:

  • You published your campaign, but do not see the personalized experience that you expect.
  • Unsure if you are qualifying for an audience.
  • You want to know if you are in the holdback of a campaign.

If you want to test unpublished changes in your campaign, see Preview mode and publishing in Optimizely Web Experimentation.

Check that the snippet is configured

First, check that the Optimizely Web Experimentation snippet is installed and configured to include Optimizely Web Personalization. See How the Optimizely Web Experimentation snippet works: Order of activation. You will do both of these things in the browser console.

Check that the snippet is up to date

See Check that the snippet is implemented

Check the console log

If you run into issues during your QA process that you cannot easily diagnose, the Optimizely Web Experimentation log is a valuable resource. Think of the log as a way of "reading Optimizely Web Experimentation's mind."

You can also read about campaign activation in the developer documentation to learn how to search the console log and see if you are in the campaign.

Check the holdback

Are you not seeing a personalized experience because you are in a campaign holdback? Here is how to check.

In the console log, use the following methods:

window.optimizely.get('state').getCampaignStateLists()['<campaignId>'][0].isInCampaignHoldback
  • If the value returned is true, you are in the holdback. So, not receiving a personalized experience is expected behavior. Try visiting the page again with an incognito browser.
  • If the value returned is false, you are not in the holdback. Next, check that you are qualifying for the audience you expect.

Check audience prioritization

Check your audience prioritization. If your campaign has multiple experiences, your prioritization setup determines which experience a visitor sees if they qualify for two or more audience.

In the console log, enter:

window.optimizely.get('data').campaigns['<campaignId>'].experiments

Then expand the array to see audiences prioritized from first to last.