Experiment Management FAQ

System

Can you add or remove personas while a Trial is live?

No. Since this fundamentally changes the experiment, once a trial is live, you cannot add or remove personas. However, you can alter the criterions that define a persona during an experiment. To do this, go to the Portfolio level and click on “Manage persona criteria” under “Common Tasks”.



Why am I getting an error when trying to view my Sector Variable Report?

If you are getting an error “The report did not load completely” and you are seeing a Wave summary report without a problem, check to see if you have composite metrics set up. This error can happen if you have set up a composite metric and subsequently deleted one of the columns that arithmetic was performed on to create the composite metric.



What determines the load time of a report?

Report rendering times vary based on the following variables:
1. Amount of data collected at that time (ie. reports on waves with 430,000 page views will generally take longer to render that a newly launched wave with 3,000 page views).

2. Number of columns in the report (ie. The more columns the longer the report rendering will generally take).
Note also that if customizing a time based report, if using the time period feature from the “General” tab to see data in smaller time increments, report rendering will slow as the time increments decrease (ie. “Daily in 5 minute intervals” will take longer to load than “Daily in 30 minute intervals”).



Can I change a Portfolio name without creating issues to experiments that are live or in production?

Yes. Once you create a portfolio, a unique portfolio ID is created. Changing the name will not affect the ID, so any experiments that are part of that portfolio are unaffected.



What is the blue circle in the graphical displays of reporting?

This represents the 'control' creative of the experiment.



Why is the Refresh Creatives tab in both the Template level and the Wave level?

Refresh creatives resets the Template "snapshot" that is being served by the Optimost servers for a specific template. Refreshing creatives at the template level results in a "snapshot" being taken at that moment for all waves referencing that template. However, there may be an instance where it makes sense to only retake the "snapshot" for a particular wave.
For example, a wave 1 could be running to customers in the "All other visitors" Persona, while doing Quality Assurance testing in Wave 2 in the "QA" Persona. During the QA testing, an issue is discovered around a value that is not being tested in Wave 1. A template changes is required to fix the issue. One can then refresh creatives for Wave 2 only by going to the Wave 2 level in the QA persona. Refreshing creatives at this level would not affect Wave 1.



Is personally identified information collected by the Optimost platform?

No. The visitor information that is collected by default is restricted to:
1. IP Address
2. Session ID (unique identifier – example: 246ui1s815nc)
3. Date/time of page view
4. Date/time of reaching page downstream from test page (if counters are deployed)

Any additional data can be optionally passed to the system via a JavaScript variable, cookie parameter or URL query string. What additional information is being passed is solely based on the discretion of the client.