Index of targeting options

This is the list of all the targeting options available in AB Tasty along with how to use them and examples of their settings. The options are categorized by group:

• URL targeting
• Targeting based on traffic source
• Behavioral targeting
• Expert targeting
• Browser targeting

URL Targeting

• Purpose: default and required targeting allowing you to define pages that will be assigned to the test according to their URL format.
• How to use it: specify a URL pattern, a target modifier (exactly matches, contains, regular expression) and/or an operator (Include, Exclude). You can find many resources on the Internet to learn how regular expression work and test your expressions (ex: http://rubular.com)
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  

Targeting based on traffic source

Type of source

• Purpose: target only visitors who come from a specific type of source: direct access, referring sites, natural searches.
• How to use it: choose the source type in the drop down menu as well as the desired operator (Include or Exclude).
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  

Source

• Purpose: target only visitors who come from a specific traffic source.
• How to use it: specify the name of the source in the field as well as the desired operator (Include or Exclude). You can add several sources by clicking on the "+" button.
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  

Landing page

• Purpose: target only visitors who have arrived at your site through a specific page.
• How to use it: enter the URL or the URL pattern of the page through which the visitor entered the site to trigger the test on the page to be tested (the landing page is not necessarily the page being tested).
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  

Behavior targeting

Old/Returning visitor

• Purpose: target only new or returning visitors. It is important to remember that this means new/returning visitors for testing purposes. When the test is started, all visitors are considered new visitors, because they have never seen the test before. Your pool of recurrent tested visitors will become progressively larger and the targeting will become more significant. If you wish to target old/returning visitors in reference to your web analytics tool, you should use cookie targeting instead, indicating the name of the cookie and the appropriate value.
• How to use it: specify the name of the cookie that must be present on your site. Optionally, you can indicate the cookie’s value.
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  

Previous page

• Purpose: target visitors who have seen a specific page just before the page being tested. This can be useful if the changes made to the test page have context only if the visitor comes from a specific page.
• How to use it: as for URL targeting, indicate the URL of the previous page. You can use different methods to target this page (exactly matches, contains, regular expression).
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  

Minimum pages viewed

• Purpose: target visitors who have seen, during their visit, a certain number of pages before the test page. This may be useful for targeting visitors who are already familiar with your site and who have already shown an interest in your offers/services.
• How to use it: indicate the minimum number of pages that must have been seen in order to trigger the test. Use the Exclude operator to reverse the filter’s behavior.
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  

Number of visits

• Purpose: target visitors who have visited your site several times. This may be useful for targeting visitors who have already shown an interest in your offers/services.
• How to use it: indicate the minimum number of visits that must be made for the test to be triggered. Use the Exclude operator to reverse the filter’s behavior.
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  

Time since the first visit

• Purpose: target visitors who are visiting your site for the first time in a certain amount of time. This may be useful for including or excluding recent visitors.
• How to use it: indicate the number of days that must have passed since the user’s first visit for the test to be triggered. Use the Exclude operator to reverse the filter’s behavior (in this case, there must be no more than X days since the first visit to trigger the test).
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  

Time since the most recent visit

• Purpose: target visitors whose last visit to your site occurred within a certain timeframe. This may be useful for including or excluding recent visitors.
• How to use it: indicate the number of days that must have passed since the user’s last visit for the test to be triggered. Use the Exclude operator to reverse the filter’s behavior (in this case, there must be no more than X days since the latest visit to trigger the test).
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  
  

Same-day visit

• Purpose: target visitors who have already visited the site today. This may be useful for targeting visitors who have already shown interest in your offers/services, and for taking advantage of their recent visit to offer them an incentive for conversion.
• How to use it: check the box to activate the targeting.
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  
  

Expert targeting

Having the cookie

• Purpose: only trigger your test if the user has a cookie in his browser. There are many potential usage cases. For example, you can validate your test by targeting a specific cookie (name/value pair) that you create in your browser, and allocating 100% of the traffic to your variation. To create a cookie, type an instruction in your browser like: document.cookie="validate_test=1". In another example, you are using Google Analytics and you want to target visitors coming from a specific source. You can target the Google Analytics cookie, placed on your site, which stores this information (cookie’s name: __utmz, value: utmcsr=example)
• How to use it: specify the name of the cookie that must be present on your site. Optionally, you can indicate the value of the cookie. The value field accepts regular expressions.
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  

Geolocalization

• Purpose: limit your test to a geographical area. We are using an IP geolocalization database provided by an external service (MaxMind) to offer this feature.
• How to use it: first, indicate the country to target. Once you have chosen the country, you can refine your target by specifying a region and a city.
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  

JavaScript

• Purpose: if URL targeting is not possible because no URL has an identical format, you can still set up the test to be triggered when a JavaScript variable is present, or if a JavaScript instruction returns a True result. For example, if there is a global variable, you can test for its existence as indicated in the example below.
• How to use it: in the field, indicate the JavaScript instruction that must return True for the test to be triggered. JQuery instructions are acceptable.
• Sample settings:
  
  

Customized variables

• Purpose: target your test based on the value of certain variables that you define in your web analytics tool. If, for example, you define a customized variable as soon as a visitor logs in to your site and that variable indicates that the user is a buyer, we can recover this information to target your test (this requires configuration on our end, so contact us to set this up).
• How to use it: indicate the name of the customized variable and the value that it must have to trigger the test.
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  

Browser targeting

Browser

• Purpose: limit your test to a type of browser, or exclude a specific version of a browser if the changes can’t be handled by that version (ex: CSS 3 rules in Internet Explorer < 9, ...).
• How to use it: select a type of browser from the drop down menu (Firefox, Chrome, ...) and optionally, a version number. You can also indicate a specific User-Agent by selecting the "Custom" option.
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  

Browser language

• Purpose: limit your test to a specific language group.
• How to use it: select the language to target from the drop down list. Targeting is done based on the browser language, and is not related to the geographical location of the user. This option may be paired with geographical IP targeting to reach the desired targets.
• Sample settings:
  
  
  
  
  
  

Device (PC, Telephone, Tablet)

• Purpose: run tests only on mobile or tablet versions of your site.
• How to use it: select the device type to be included or excluded in the test from the drop down menu. You have three choices: PC, telephone, or tablet. If you need to target a specific device model (ex: iPad), you would use a browser target instead, specifying a particular User-Agent. Note: tests are run on the mobile version of your website, and not the corresponding apps. At the present time, we do not handle tests on iPhone, iPad, or other apps.
• Sample settings: