Using Personalisation framework

To create traits and apply them to content, you must be a simple edit user (Edit+) or higher.

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Terminology
Persona conditions
Personalisation settings
General settings
Personalisation testing tool

Terminology

The following terms are used extensively in this article. Review the following terminology before continuing with the setup procedures.

Personas: Personas are used to define a user type—for example, a “first-time” visitor. With the framework installed, extra data about the persona is saved to the Persona asset in Matrix. See the Persona documentation for general information about the Persona asset type.
Traits: A trait is an attribute of a persona. Think of traits as facts that you want to store about users as they visit the site.
Variations: Variations are settings that can be applied to pages within Matrix. Once a Persona is applied to a Variation, the page’s content will only show for that persona. See Variation Settings in the Standard Page documentation for more information about setting up Variations manually.

Persona conditions

Conditional operators are used for evaluating traits associated with the persona and determining how a user fits into a persona.

You use these conditions in the Persona evaluation section.

Operator Description

Operator	Description
`=`	Equals
`=*`	Equals if set
`!`	Not
`!*`	Not if set
`<`	Less than
`<*`	Less than if set
`>`	Greater than
`>*`	Greater than if set
`n`	Not set

=

Equals

=*

Equals if set

!

Not

!*

Not if set

<

Less than

<*

Less than if set

>

Greater than

>*

Greater than if set

n

Not set

You can evaluate different traits with the same operator. But you can not evaluate the same trait with different operators.

For example, if you want to use the trait site-visits in a persona, you could not use evaluation conditions in the following way:

site-visits > 5 < 10

Personalisation settings

Most of the personalization management is handled in Edit+ through the content screen of the Personalisation Settings page. The settings are broken into the following tabs:

General settings
Personas
Tracking Rules

General settings

The general settings tab allows you to define the following variables.

Variable	Description
Persona metadata	The asset ID of the metadata field applied to each content container. This field links the metadata to the asset that stores the targeting rules.
Content wrapper id	The unique CSS ID of the main page container. This ID is used within the frontend personalization code to specify where the framework should look for sections of content to be personalized.

Variable

Description

Persona metadata

The asset ID of the metadata field applied to each content container.

This field links the metadata to the asset that stores the targeting rules.

Content wrapper id

The unique CSS ID of the main page container.

This ID is used within the frontend personalization code to specify where the framework should look for sections of content to be personalized.

Built-in personas

The personalisation framework comes with three built-in personas:

First-time visitor
Return visitor
Campaign visitor

These use traits and conditions to validate if a user fits into one or more of these personas.

You can customize the built-in persona names to suit your specific personalization needs. If you need to add more personas beyond the built-in personas, see Adding a persona.

Adding a persona

The following can only be done through the Admin interface.

Follow these steps to add additional personas to your site:

Locate the Personalisation Personas folder in the Asset tree.
Right-click on the Personas folder and select New Child Configuration Persona to add a persona asset within this folder.

Keep all persona assets you create as direct children of the Personas folder. Personas stored within a sub-folder structure are ignored.
Name the asset according to the name you want the persona to have in editing interfaces.
In the Allowed Root Nodes field, select a root node that includes your site content.
Edit the details screen of the persona:
- Enable the Client Side Evaluation Settings setting.
- Set a unique key for the persona. The key must be lower-case, unique, and must not be changed after it is set.
Click Save to save your changes

Customising a persona

Edit+ offers an interface to manage personas easily. To finish editing the persona:

In Edit+, open the Personalisation settings asset and select the content screen.
Open the Personas tab.
Set the persona attributes according to the reference table in this section.
Click Save to save the changes you made to the persona.

Persona Attribute Description

Persona Attribute	Description
Colour	Select a color to help identify the persona. Answer these questions when selecting a color: How will your chosen color contrast against the existing persona colors? What color would work best for content editors to use as a quick visual reference to the personas they are targeting?
Summary	Describe what the persona targets and how it should be used. The testing tool shows this summary in preview mode when editing page content.
Conditions	You can add and remove as many rows of conditions as required using the Add a condition, and Remove buttons. Each condition lets you specify the following values: Trait Enter the key of the trait you wish to evaluate. Currently, you will need to manually copy the key from the trait tab into this field when setting up your tracking rule, as a select list or auto-suggest functionality has not been added yet. Ensure the trait key is correct. Condition Select the logic type to evaluate the trait. Value Enter the value to test the condition against. For conditional evaluations such as `>` and `<`, make sure you specify numeric values, or you may get unexpected results.

Colour

Select a color to help identify the persona.

Answer these questions when selecting a color:

How will your chosen color contrast against the existing persona colors?
What color would work best for content editors to use as a quick visual reference to the personas they are targeting?

Summary

Describe what the persona targets and how it should be used. The testing tool shows this summary in preview mode when editing page content.

Conditions

You can add and remove as many rows of conditions as required using the Add a condition, and Remove buttons.

Each condition lets you specify the following values:

Trait: Enter the key of the trait you wish to evaluate. Currently, you will need to manually copy the key from the trait tab into this field when setting up your tracking rule, as a select list or auto-suggest functionality has not been added yet. Ensure the trait key is correct.
Condition: Select the logic type to evaluate the trait.
Value: Enter the value to test the condition against. For conditional evaluations such as > and <, make sure you specify numeric values, or you may get unexpected results.

You should now see an updated list of personas, with your new color-coded persona in the list.

You can now use your persona for targeting content in Edit+ mode, and testing content in preview mode.

Tracking rules

Tracking rules are used to learn information about users to help decide which personas they should belong to, based on things we can infer from their browsing activity.

Tracking rules help you decide which personas a user should belong to based on their browsing activity.

You can collect information about a user’s browsing habits at the following points during page loading:

when a page is viewed
when the Document Object Model (DOM) is loaded
before personas are evaluated, and content is organized.

The following tracking concepts are supported and can be further customized with some of the other available options, such as path match (described below).

Tracking Concept

Example Uses

Visits the site (or part of the site)

Site navigation

What is the most popular site sub-section within a particular section of the site?

Which top-level section is most popular for this user?

Metadata tags

Most popular metadata tags on pages visited by the user across the site (or a part of the site).

For example, given a particular metadata tag name, which value is most popular on the pages visited by this user?

Referrer

What is the most popular referrer tracking multiple site entries?

What is the most recent referrer entry to the site?

URL Variables

What URL variables were present when entering the site. For example, what marketing UTM tracking codes were present in the URL when the user landed on the site?

Browsing location

What country is the user browsing the site from?

This tracking concept requires additional configuration to work. Contact Squiz Support for assistance with setting this tracking concept for your site.

If the current page view has updated the tracking logic, which would lead to the user being evaluated into a different persona, this evaluation can happen within the same page view.

Adding a tracking rule

You add tracking rules from the tracking rule page.

How to add a tracking rule to a persona

Click Add on the Tracking tab to load the tracking rule page.
See the reference table for the list of available parameters you can set.
Apply the parameters to your tracking rule.
Click Add/update (not the Save button at the top of the page) to save your tracking rule.

Parameter Description

Key

The key for the tracking rule. This must contain only lower-case letters and hyphens.

Note

A description that explains how this tracking rule works for Edit+ users.

Tracking source

The source used to inform the tracking rule. Tracking sources include the following:

Visits: Numeric, number of hits on the page.
Track-sub-section: Track visits to a section and it’s top-level sub-pages.
Track-metadata-tags: Track metadata tags present on any pages viewed by the user.
Referrer: Track incoming referrer header values.
URL-variable: Track incoming URL variables.
Geolocate: Identifies the current country of the user - up to once per day.

Additional configuration is required for Geolocate, which Squiz Support can help you set up.

Tracking output

How the data should be tracked.

There are a few options available. However, not all options work with all tracking sources.

Increment: Increment an integer in the trait. Used with visits.
Set: Set the value directly into the trait. Used with track-sub-section, track-metadata-tags, referrer, URL-variable, geolocate.
Most popular: Keep track of values as they change over time, and store only the most popular value in the trait. Used with track-sub-section, track-metadata-tags, referrer, URL-variable.

Vfield

This field will only display for track-url-field. Enter the name of the URL field you want to track here (for example, utm_campaign).

Mfield

This field will only display for track-metadata-field. Enter the name of the metadata tag you want to track here (for example, DC.Subject).

Gfield

This field will only display for geolocate.

This requires additional configuration. Contact your account manager for assistance with setting up Gfield support.

Pathmatch

Can be used with any tracking type - allows scoping the rule to only take any action if the current page view matches the path.

Regular expression syntax controls the matching logic for this tracking rule. A normal path is also valid in this parameter.

For example, /about/ will match the about path, and any page views under the about section of the site will invoke the tracking rule.

Trait

The unique key of the trait that the tracking data should be stored in.

Personalisation testing tool

You can view how users will see your content through the regular Edit+ Preview feature.

When personalization features are active on the asset you are editing, an extra option becomes available to the right of the screen size icon.

Click the option to enable the Personalisation Testing Tool, which is available from the left of the screen.

You can simulate one or more personas within the page you are previewing.

You can also highlight the personalized content that is on the screen. This does not affect how the content is displayed on your frontend: it is a way for you to simulate what your users will see.