Chapter 6: Easily avoidable pitfalls
Last update: November 10, 2022
- Topics:
- Overview
The good thing about starting your optimization and personalization program now is that people who have been doing it for a while have already uncovered many of the mistakes that are easy to make. By knowing about these pitfalls, you can easily avoid them or remedy them.
See Ten common A/B testing pitfalls and how to avoid them for detailed information. In addition to the ideas presented in that article, keep this short list handy to avoid or fix these common testing and personalization pitfalls.
Pitfall | Solution |
---|---|
Not having enough traffic to reach statistically significant results. | Use the Adobe Target Sample Size Calculator in advance to understand how long the test must run, and then run the test to completion. |
Making a change that is too small or unnoticeable. | Make the change substantial enough so that it can be visible when you stand a few feet away from the screen. |
Failing to align activities with business objectives. | Increase focus on the prioritization methodology and communicate that methodology to internal stakeholders. |
Having little or no testing backlog. | Engage with internal stakeholders and allow them to submit tests that are aligned with key business goals. |
Extending activity launches past deadlines | Improve documentation for activities and include specific details about the test setup. |
Selecting activity success metrics data that don’t help with decision making. | Document all primary test metrics and include additional metrics to gain additional insights. |
Making changes during the test that could impact results. | Maintain a calendar of upcoming promotions and site changes. Clearly communicate Target activity launches to avoid conflicts. |
Changing test experiences or criteria close to an activity launch. | Request sign-off from key stakeholders early in the test activity process. |
Concluding an activity before the results are statistically significant. | Verify test duration using the Adobe Target Sample Size Calculator. |
Receiving negative or flat results from a Target activity. | Confirm that the activity is worth testing. |
Not hard coding the winning experience. | Use activity data to show value to get buy-in for hard-coding. |
Not sharing results beyond the testing team. | Expand communications to include lunch and learns, develop a program dashboard, and schedule stakeholder meetings. |
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Target
- Adobe Target Business Practitioner Guide Home
- Target release notes
- Introduction
- Introduction to Target
- Access Target from the Adobe Experience Cloud
- Target key concepts
- Understand the Target UI
- Adobe Target welcome kit
- Target welcome kit overview
- Chapter 1: Introduction
- Chapter 2: Target at a glance
- Chapter 3: Develop your testing and personalization ideas
- Chapter 4: Tips for using Target
- Chapter 5: Inspiration for testing and personalization activities
- Chapter 6: Easily avoidable pitfalls
- Chapter 7: Create and run your first Target activity
- Chapter 8: Communicate your activity results
- Chapter 9: Next steps and resources
- Glossary
- How Target works
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- A4T overview
- Before you implement
- Analytics for Target implementation
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- Use an Analytics tracking server
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- Integrate Target with Adobe Customer Journey Analytics
- Integrate Target with Adobe Journey Optimizer (AJO)
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- Integrate with Real-time Customer Data Platform
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- Activities
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- Random Forest Algorithm
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- Data collection for the Target personalization algorithms
- Estimate the traffic required for success
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- Visual Experience Composer (VEC)
- Visual Experience Composer overview
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- Multipage activity
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- Troubleshooting the Visual Experience Composer overview
- Troubleshooting the Visual Experience Composer and Enhanced Experience Composer
- Troubleshooting the Visual Experience Composer
- Troubleshooting the Enhanced Experience Composer
- Enabling mixed content in your browser
- Page modification scenarios
- Visual Editing Helper extension
- Visual Experience Composer helper extension
- Redirect to a URL
- Creating carousels that work in the Visual Experience Composer
- Form-Based Experience Composer
- Single Page App (SPA) Visual Experience Composer
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- Recommendations overview
- Introduction to Recommendations
- Plan and implement Recommendations
- Entities
- Criteria
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- Create criteria
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- Base the recommendation on a recommendation key
- The science behind Target’s recommendations algorithms
- Upload custom criteria
- Dynamic and static inclusion rules
- Use a backup recommendation
- Work with multi-value attributes
- Use Adobe Analytics with Recommendations
- Design
- Activity
- Recommendations as an offer
- Frequently asked questions
- Recommendations Classic documentation
- Troubleshoot Target
- Target APIs
- Resources and contact information
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