Explore mode - a sample visit
You use Explore mode to simulate the experience of visiting your website from the perspective of a real visitor. When you select a preset, the look and feel of your website is adapted during the visit to match the experience of one of your important business target groups specified by the corresponding preset. There are two ways to simulate a visit:
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In a Fixed visit, as the visitor navigates through your website, all their profile values are automatically reset to the values specified in the selected preset. In a Fixed visit, each page of the website appears to the visitor as if they landed directly on that page as the first page of their visit or kept their profile fixed.
This means that any goals, campaigns, or profile values that are triggered during the visit are automatically reset and are not accumulated as values during the visit.
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In a Journey visit, as the visitor navigates through your website, all the values are accumulated and these values follow the visitor so that the visit simulates a real journey.
This means that any goals, campaigns, or profile values that are triggered during the visit are automatically associated with the visitor and are accumulated during the visit.
Presets
Presets are personas that have values associated with them such as goals, campaigns, profile values, or conditional renderings. The SBOS team can help you to develop the appropriate presets to use with your own website.
This example uses a preset:
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Cecile - a company CEO who travels first class and expects a high standard of business accommodation.
The scenario simulates the experience that Cecile has when she visits different pages of the Jetstream website. As she navigate through the website, you can see how the website adapts and changes according to her movements, as she achieves goals, changes her behavior, and visits different pages on the site.
This scenario also describes the difference between a Fixed visit and a Journey visit.
Selecting a preset
Before you can simulate a visit to the website, you must select the appropriate preset.
To select a preset for the Explore mode:
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In the Experience Editor, in the Mode group, click Explore.
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In the Settings panel, expand the Experience section and select the relevant preset, for example, Cecile.
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At the top of the panel, select the relevant explore mode - Fixed or Journey.
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Click Apply.
The Home page
On the Jetstream website, the default Home page displays information about Venice:
In the Viewer panel, in the Page Configuration section, you can see that in the Hero Carousel spot, no personalization rules have been triggered.
When Cecile visits the website, the Home page displays information about Paris because this is specified by the Mostly Cecile personalization rule.
In the Viewer panel, in the Page Configuration section for both a Fixed and a Journey visit, you can see that in the Hero Carousel spot, the Mostly Cecile personalization rule has been applied and is displayed in bold with a green icon. This happens because the Cecile preset values closely match the values specified for this personalization rule (Mostly Cecile).
The Destinations page
Cecile is curious about possible destinations and navigates to the Destinations page.
She clicks the Caribbean destination.
The Caribbean is a popular vacation destination for families and is therefore a better profile match for the more family-oriented profile of the Ian preset. Ian is a family man looking for a holiday destination that is all-inclusive, offers a wide variety of fun activities for the family, and provides reliable childcare facilities.
In a Fixed visit, when Cecile visits the Caribbean page, 20 points are added to the Ian persona profile key for Cecile. This is because the Ian persona has become the most dominant.
This value is only visible when she views this page – when she leaves the page, the values for the Cecile preset are reset to 0.
In a Journey visit, when Cecile visits the Caribbean page, it is personalized for the Ian persona profile key and the value points are kept.
Back on the Home page
Cecile returns to the Home page.
In a Fixed visit, she still sees the front page about Paris because in a Fixed visit, all the values are automatically reset and match the selected preset on each page that is requested. The profile value of 20 points that was added to Ian’s profile is reset to zero; the profile value that is specified in the Cecile preset for this profile is added instead.
In a Journey visit, the Home page is now personalized for the Ian profile because Cecile chose a family destination.
The Ian profile is now the most dominant profile for this visit – it has 20 points while the Cecile profile only has 10 points. The home page therefore displays information about a family holiday destination instead of a typical business trip destination.
In the Hero Carousel, Mostly Ian has replaced Mostly Cecile as the applied personalization rule.
Changing the profile
If at any stage you want to alter the values and profile characteristics, you can make these changes directly in the Settings panel, For example, you can expand the Onsite Behavior section and change the Persona profile values. The values for the current visit are updated when you click Apply.
For example, you can change the value of the Ian profile key to zero or 50. Or, you can select a goal or event to see how the site behaves after the goal or event is triggered.
When you click Apply, this does not actually save any changes to the values defined for the preset. You can only make permanent changes in the Content Editor.
You can always click Reset in the Settings panel to set the profile values and other xMarketing values that are used in Explore mode back to the initial settings from the preset.
The Newsletter Signup page
Cecile decides to sign up for the Jetstream newsletter. When she submits the form, it triggers the Jetstream newsletter signup form goal and adds 5 engagement value points to her visit.
In a Fixed visit, the goal that is applied to the submit form button is not triggered.
In a Journey visit, in the Onsite Behavior section, you can see that the goal is registered and Cecile gains 5 engagement value points. The Cecile preset has been configured with several goals that she has already achieved, giving her an additional 70 engagement value points. After she has signed up for the newsletter, she has a total of 75 engagement value points.
Searching
Cecile decides to search for a flight from Copenhagen to Punta Cana in the Caribbean.
In a Fixed visit, when she is on the Search results page, no other triggered goals are displayed; only goals that are triggered on the current page are shown. Cecile's search brings up no results, but her search triggers the Flight Search goal.
In a Journey visit, the Flight Search goal adds another 10 engagement value points to her profile.
No results were found, so Cecile decides to search for another flight, this time from Copenhagen to Venice. Performing this search adds another 10 engagement value points.
The Select Your Flights page
This time, her search returns several flights. She selects a suitable flight and books it. On this page, she has triggered the Flight Search goal again.
In a Fixed visit, no other triggered goals are displayed.
In a Journey visit, booking a flight adds 70 engagement value points giving Cecile's profile a total of 165 points.
The Thank You page
On the Thank You page, Cecile triggered the Bookings goal.
In a Fixed visit, because only goals that are triggered on the current page are shown, the Bookings goal is displayed and the Flight Search goal is no longer visible.
However, in a Journey visit, the Viewer panel for her journey shows that Cecile has also achieved 3 extra goals during this visit.
