IBM Software Support for Enterprise Marketing Management Coremetrics Implementation

Implementation Guide
Phase I
June 2011

http://support.coremetrics.com [email protected]

Introduction .............................................................................................................................................................. 3 About this Guide ..................................................................................................................................................... 3 The Implementation ................................................................................................................................................ 3 How Coremetrics Tagging Works .......................................................................................................................... 4 Implementation Design Phase I ........................................................................................................................... 5 Page IDs ................................................................................................................................................................. 5 URL Based Page IDs .......................................................................................................................................... 5 Dynamically Generated Page IDs ....................................................................................................................... 6 Order ID .................................................................................................................................................................. 6 Customer ID ........................................................................................................................................................... 6 Implementation Checklist Phase I ....................................................................................................................... 7 Development Phase I ............................................................................................................................................ 8 The TagBar ............................................................................................................................................................. 8 Installing the TagBar ........................................................................................................................................... 8 How to use it ....................................................................................................................................................... 8 Tag Audit Mode ................................................................................................................................................... 9 Adding the JavaScript libraries ............................................................................................................................... 9 Setting Global Data Collection Parameters .......................................................................................................... 10 Tag creation code Phase I................................................................................................................................. 11 Test and Production Systems ........................................................................................................................... 12 All Pages ........................................................................................................................................................... 13 Product Detail Pages ........................................................................................................................................ 13 Order Confirmation Page .................................................................................................................................. 13 Tags Phase I ..................................................................................................................................................... 13 Page View Tag.................................................................................................................................................. 13 Order Tag .......................................................................................................................................................... 14 Technical Properties Tags ................................................................................................................................ 15 Implementation Checklist ..................................................................................................................................... 15 Testing Phase I .................................................................................................................................................... 16 The TagBar ........................................................................................................................................................... 16 The Implementation Test Tool (ITT) ..................................................................................................................... 16 Description ........................................................................................................................................................ 16 Where to find it .................................................................................................................................................. 16 How to use it ..................................................................................................................................................... 16 Test Reports ......................................................................................................................................................... 17 Description ........................................................................................................................................................ 17 Where to find them............................................................................................................................................ 17 How to use them ............................................................................................................................................... 17 Implementation Checklist ..................................................................................................................................... 17 Go Live Phase I ................................................................................................................................................ 18 Test vs. Production Environments ........................................................................................................................ 18 Deploy to Production ............................................................................................................................................ 18 Check with TagBar ............................................................................................................................................... 18 Implementation Checklist ..................................................................................................................................... 18 Appendix A - Tagging Framed Pages .................................................................................................................. 19 Appendix B Link Tracking .................................................................................................................................. 20 Appendix C External Page Tagging .................................................................................................................. 21 Appendix D Coremetrics Reports - Tag Matrix ................................................................................................ 22 Appendix E Parameters and Tags ..................................................................................................................... 24 Appendix F Phase I Implementation Checklist ................................................................................................ 25

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Introduction
About this Guide
This document is intended to provide both an introduction to Coremetrics Implementation and a step-by-step guide to tagging web site pages according to Coremetrics best practices.

The Implementation
Tagging is the process of adding JavaScript Pageview and Order tag calls to web pages so that information can be passed to Coremetrics to generate Phase I client reports. Coremetrics Implementation is divided into two phases: Phase I and Phase II. Phase I requires implementation of the pageview and order data collection tags only. These two tags support a substantial range of Coremetrics reporting including valuable high-ROI reports such as Top Line, Marketing, On Site Search, Content and LIVEview. Training and report access are provided immediately at the conclusion of Phase I.

Phase II Implementation incorporates item-level Product tracking, Registration tracking and any additional tags required to support your specific implementation and contracted features. The Implementation process consists of four parts, executed initially for Phase I and again in Phase II:

Designing the implementation

In order for the information passed to Coremetrics to mean anything, the clients implementation must be carefully designed so that page names, product IDs, categories and other labels are consistent and coherent across the enterprise.

Creating the code that will add the appropriate JavaScript function calls to site pages

The JavaScript calls must be either hard coded in the body of each HTM page or else the server side scripts used to generate pages (using ASP, PHP, JSP, etc) must be edited to include code that will create the code for both the JavaScript functions and the parameters they contain.

Testing code and Coremetrics reporting

Various tools are available for verification of data collection and reporting. These tools allow in-page validation as well as validation of collected test report data prior to production launch.

Promoting code to the Production server

When the code has been completed and tested on the development server, it can then be switched to the Production server. Additional production level validation is recommended by comparing the sales metrics to client backend server order data.

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How Coremetrics Tagging Works

Coremetrics collects data at the client browser level. Data is captured when a tagged site page is rendered by the visitors browser. JavaScript function calls, or tags, are executed as the requested page renders in the visitor browser, creating standard http GET image requests appended with query string parameter name=value pairs obtained from the tag parameter data strings. The requests are sent to Coremetrics data collection servers where the appended name=value pairs are extracted and loaded into your analytics data warehouse for subsequent reporting as actionable metrics. The data parameters in the tag function calls communicate information about pages, products and visitor activities, such as carting or selecting specific products, completing purchases, registering or logging on, interacting with specific page elements, etc. JavaScript tags function call format example:

<script type="text/JavaScript"> cmTagName(<parameter_1>,<parameter 2>,<parameter 3>, etc); </script>

The image request received by Coremetrics data acquisition servers is parsed to extract the visitor data from the name=value query string parameter pairs, loaded into the analytics data warehouse, and a 1 x 1 pixel GIF file is returned to the requesting browser. The data collection image request are made in memory, rather than written directly onto the page, preventing response images from visibly rendering on the page. The image request is asynchronous with the page load and cannot interrupt page load or visitor experience. In the unlikely event that the request cannot reach the Coremetrics data collection servers or the request response pixel is not received by the requesting browser, the page continues to render: site functionality and visitor experience are unaffected.

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Implementation Design Phase I

Phase I Implementation design includes determination of Page IDs, Order ID, Customer ID and identification of necessary server-side and/or client-side code required to obtain these values and send them as part of the Pageview and Order function tag calls. Only through carefully planned naming conventions and hierarchical structures can the massive amount of data produced by customers visiting a clients website be collected and converted into comprehensive and coherent reports. Names need to be consistent, easy to read, unique and meaningful. The following values are automatically removed from Coremetrics tag parameter data and cannot be collected or reported: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. single quote (') double quote (") carriage return (hex 0D; regular expression \r) line feed (hex 0A; regular expression \n) comma (,): replaced with a space character prior to data loading and reporting

Page IDs
Page IDs (or names) are used in many reports and as such should be unique and represent the content the user sees on the page. They should also be uncomplicated and meaningful without reference to the page itself. For example, in this Top Entry Pages report, the page IDs are easy to comprehend without any knowledge of the clients business.

A Page ID can be any alphanumeric string built and passed into the corresponding Coremetrics tag function. In order to ensure consistent page-related reports and tagging, you will need to decide upon a set of page-naming conventions that can be easily maintained and adhered to. Coremetrics recommends the following conventions.

URL Based Page IDs

For static pages, it is possible to use the path and filename as a basis for the Page ID. For example, if a page URL is:
http://www.clientsite.com/resources/white_papers.html?test=123

The collected and reported Page ID will be resources/white_papers.html. Calling the Page View tag with no Page ID value will also generate this default Page ID value: cmCreatePageviewTag();.

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Dynamicall y Generated Page IDs

Dynamically generated pages are rendered by server-side scripts and do not have unique filenames. Example: http://mysite.com/pages.asp. This means the above convention would not be meaningful. This is particularly true when product pages are generated from the same template and all have the same name. For such pages Coremetrics recommends the following naming conventions for the page names.

General
A short, unique name, preferable less than 40 characters in length as longer names will be truncated in the Page column as shown above. For example:
Home Help Step 1 - Billing Step 5 Confirmation

Category Pages
Category Page IDs are not automatically created. Some clients choose to use the category name prefixed with CATEGORY: or CAT: so that categories are easy to discern and sort upon in reports but this is not obligatory For example:
CATEGORY:PRINTERS

Search Results Pages

For a search results page generated as the result of an onsite search, the following convention should be applied. If one or more result is found, the page ID should be:
SEARCH SUCCESSFUL pg <page number>

For example:
SEARCH SUCCESSFUL pg 122

If no results are returned, the page ID should be:

SEARCH UNSUCCESSFUL

Order ID
Order ID values are collected with the Order tag sent from ecommerce order confirmation, application completion, and booking completion pages. The Order ID is a unique alphanumeric value up to 64 bytes in length representing that unique order, application or booking.
cmCreateOrderTag(<Order ID>,<Order Subtotal>,<Order Shipping Amount>,<Customer ID>,<Customer City>,<Customer State>,<Customer Zip>)

Customer ID
Customer ID values are collected with the Order tag sent from ecommerce order confirmation, application completion, and booking completion pages. The Customer ID is a unique alphanumeric value up to 256 bytes in length representing a unique purchasing visitor. This value is typically the customers email address, or an internal GUID generated for each unique registered customer. The GUID can be based on email, account logon, or other unique repeatable identifier.
cmCreateOrderTag(<Order ID>,<Order Subtotal>,<Order Shipping Amount>,<Customer ID>,<Customer City>,<Customer State>,<Customer Zip>)

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Implementation Checklist Phase I

1

2 3

Received assigned Client IDs Choose data collection subdomain and send SSL Cert information to Coremetrics (for Coremetrics-managed first party data collection only) Create conventions for PageIDs, OrderID and CustomerID

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Development Phase I
Once Page naming, Order ID and Customer ID conventions have been agreed on, tagging can begin. But first it is recommended that you take a look at the pages of some existing Coremetrics clients pages to see how they have gone about doing it.

The TagBar
The Coremetrics TagBar is an Internet Explorer plug-in that allows you to view all the tags being sent to Coremetrics from a Coremetrics tagged page. This is used to ensure the tags on a page being developed are sending the appropriate values in the appropriate fields. If a tag does not showing up in the TagBar this could indicate a problem with the code or a JavaScript error that is preventing the tag from being rendered. The TagBar can be downloaded as part of cmTools or is available as a standalone tool. Further information can be found in the Coremetrics TagBar Users Guide, which can be obtained from your Coremetrics representative.

Installing the TagBar

TagBar can be installed as part of the Coremetrics Tools plugin downloadable directly from the Reports / Content / LIVEview Click Overlay section of http://welcome.coremetrics.com production reporting. The Tools version of tagbar can be installed to IE or Firefox browsers. A stand-alone version of the TagBar for IE only can be downloaded from https://support.coremetrics.com using your assigned production report logon credentials. Please contact your assigned Implementation Engineer, Customer Support, or your internal Coremetrics report administrator to obtain production report logon credentials.

How to use it
Once installed on the computer, the TagBar can be activated by clicking on the Coremetrics icon in the Internet Explorer toolbar. This will open the TagBar in a side panel of the browser. Within the TagBar frame, all Coremetrics tags on the current page will be shown, including all the values set within the tag. An example is shown below.

T his information was produced by the following tag sending data to Coremetrics:
<script type="text/JavaScript"> cmCreatePageviewTag("Search Successful","epson","30006","41");

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</script>

The TagBar also indicates whether those tags are pointed to the test environment (test.coremetrics.com) or the production environment (data.coremetrics.com) in parenthesis next to the name of the tag. The Action menu in the upper right corner provides a list of actions that can used with the TagBar. Refresh Tag Display Copy Selected Text Updates the tags displayed in the TagBar Copies any text that is selected within the TagBar to the clipboard. Note: Ctrl-C will not work within the TagBar application for copying text to the clipboard. Displays the Page ID for the current page and copies the value to the clipboard. Opens a new window to display the Tag Monitor, which records all tags sent to Coremetrics in a list form, separated by lines to indicate tags sent from the same page.

Show/Copy Page ID Open Tag Monitor

Tag Audit Mode

When the Tag Audit Mode box is checked, the Audit Mode is activated and the TagBar tool performs a routine series of validations on every page. When a tag sends an image request to the Coremetrics server, the TagBar verifies if data acquisition passes a specific set of standards. If the tag(s) do not pass a certain set of criteria, the tool indicates an error has occurred and displays a message referencing the issue that occurred and a resolution. The error messages displayed can be found in the appendix to the Coremetrics Tag Bar Users Guide, which is available on the Coremetrics Support site.

Adding the JavaScript libraries

Coremetrics provides a single library file to support the tagging of your site: eluminate.js. This Coremetrics-hosted file provides JavaScript code defining a set of functions which can be called with appropriate parameter data to send data collection image requests to Coremetrics. This file must be included in all pages implementing Coremetrics. Legacy Note: Coremetrics began offering a single combined Coremetrics-hosted library file in April 2010. Implementations Completed prior to this date may be using separate and locally hosted eluminate.js and cmdatatagutils.js library files. Please consult Coremetrics Support to upgrade to Coremetrics-hosted library files. eluminate.js

The eluminate.js file is a standard library file that defines the core functionality of the Coremetrics tagging technology. This file is minified and obfuscated. This file should be included on all pages that require Coremetrics tracking.
<head> <script type="text/javascript" src="//libs.coremetrics.com/eluminate.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> cmSetClientID(); </script> </head>

Your specific implementation may include customizations which override the default data collection functions or introduce new functions. This custom file, cmcustom.js, is delivered by Coremetrics Support and is locally hosted by your organization. Please see the contents of this file for details on your specific customizations: cmcustom.js

This file is included in all pages immediately after the Coremetrics-hosted eluminate.js library include:
<head>

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<script type="text/javascript" src="//libs.coremetrics.com/eluminate.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="//thesite.com/cmcustom.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> cmSetClientID(); </script> </head>

Setting Global Data Collection Parameters

Coremetrics provides several functions allowing control of various aspects of the Coremetrics implementation. cmSetClientID() - this function is required for all implementations.

cmSetupOther() - optional function allowing control of various optional implementation parameters. If this function is not called default settings will be used for the implementation. Coremetrics Support will advise you if this function is required for your implementation and what settings to use. cmSetupNormalization() - optional function allow control of Coremetrics automatic Link Click data collection. Coremetrics Support will advise you if this function is required for your implementation and what settings to use.

Legacy Note: These functions may not be available in libraries supporting implementations completed prior to April 2010 and/or may not be applicable to your implementation. Please contact Coremetrics Support to upgrade. This function is required and sets values for Client ID, 1 Party method (Client Managed or Coremetrics Managed), Data Collection Domain and Cookie Domain.
<head> <script type="text/javascript" src="//libs.coremetrics.com/eluminate.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> // Client Managed First Party cmSetClientID("99999999",true,"data.coremetrics.com","thesite.com"); // Coremetrics Managed First Party cmSetClientID("99999999",false,"<dcd>.thesite.com","thesite.com"); </script> </head>
st

This function must be called on every page sending data to Coremetrics. Parameter Client ID Required Required Description Unique 8-digit Coremetrics-assigned account code associated with a single analytics data warehouse and reporting instance. Boolean true or false: true indicates st Client Managed 1 Party. false st indicates Coremetrics Managed 1 Party. The target domain for Coremetrics data collection requests. If Client Managed = false: Data Collection Domain should be set to the st Coremetrics Managed 1 Party data collection domain. Example: (<1stpartydcd>.thesite.com). If Client Managed = true: Data Collection Domain should be set to

Client Managed

Required

Data Collection Domain

Required

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data.coremetrics.com. Cookie Domain Required The domain for Client Managed Coremetrics cookies. Cookie Domain should be set to the 2nd level site domain (thesite.com) of the domain serving the tagged page(s). In cases of extra domain levels prior to the uniquely identifying site domain value, this may be a 3rd or higher level. Example: thesite.co.uk. If Client Managed = false: Coremetrics Visitor and Session cookies will be set under the Coremetrics Managed Data Collection Domain (<1stpartydcd>.thesite.com). Other Coremetrics cookies will be set in the Cookie Domain. If Client Managed = true: ALL Coremetrics cookies are set in the Cookie Domain.

Tag creation code Phase I

As a best practice, all Coremetrics-related code should be modularized so it is easy to maintain and deactivate if necessary. In order to do this, Coremetrics recommends creating a single Coremetrics server-side include file that can be used on all dynamic pages within your site. This include file will contain logic to determine what type of page is being rendered, and based on that type, write the appropriate Coremetrics JavaScript code into the page. The include file should also have a flag that will allow you to switch off the Coremetrics JavaScript code from rendering, in case you ever need to turn off the Coremetrics code for any reason, as well as an automated way of determining whether to point the tags to the Coremetrics test or production servers. The Coremetrics include file should be contained in a global header, global footer, or other global include file used in the site. This will enable the code to be immediately propagated to all pages that make use of this include. Having access to these global includes will allow you to avoid having to touch a large number of pages in the implementation process. The logic to determine what type of page is being rendered and write the appropriate Coremetrics JavaScript code based on that type should be done in the form of a case statement. The case statement should have a number of checks for each type of page that will need tags other than the default Page View tag. Each of these checks would then render in the appropriate tagging functions needed on that page type. The default case for pages that do not fall into any special cases would be to throw a Page View tag with the default naming convention. The following is an example of a case statement in pseudocode:
<head> <script type="text/javascript" src="//libs.coremetrics.com/eluminate.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> if(coremetricsIsProduction) cmSetClientID("99999999",true,"data.coremetrics.com","thesite.com"); else // send data to test system cmSetClientID("69999999",false,"testdata.coremetrics.com","thesite.com"); </script> </head> <body> ... if(coremetricsOnFlag) { if(pageType is homepage) { pageID is "HOME PAGE"

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render cmCreatePageviewTag() } else if (pageType is product details page) { pageID is "PRODUCT: " + <productname> render cmCreatePageviewTag() } else if (pageType is shopping cart page) { pageID is "SHOPPING CART" render cmCreatePageviewTag() } else if (pageType is order confirmation page) { pageID is "SHOPPING CART" orderID is <system-orderID> customerID is <visitor-email> render cmCreatPageviewTag(), cmCreateOrderTag() with appropriate parameters } else ... ...Do other page type checks here... } render cmCreatePageviewTag() with appropriate parameters else { default case, render cmCreatePageviewTag() with default naming convention } } </body>

Tags should be located in the <body> of the page being tagged as some functionality may not work correctly if they are placed in the <head> or elsewhere out side the <body>. They should be as near as possible to the top of the page to minimize the chance of a visitor clicking off the page before the information in the tag can be sent to the server.

Notes
1. The entire code is wrapped in an if(coremetricsOnFlag) case statement that checks to see if a server-side Coremetrics flag has been set. This enables the client to be able to turn off Coremetrics tracking if required. 2. The design and coding of server-side scripts, template files, etc is beyond the scope of this guide.

Test and Production S ystems

Coremetrics provides two environments: test and production. The test environment should be used while tags are in development (your development and staging environments). The production environment should be used once the tags are moved to the live production site. Coremetrics Test System: 1. Data Collection Domain: testdata.coremetrics.com 2. Client ID: your 8-digit production Client ID, with first digit replaced by 6. Example: 12345678 production ID has a test ID equivalent of 62345678 3. Reporting URL: http://welcome.coremetrics.com

In order to send data collection to the 6-series Client ID and Data Collection Domain, the cmSetClientID() function call on non-production pages should be modified as follows. The following page is pointed to the test system. Note the first digit of the Client ID parameter is changed to 6 and Client Managed parameter is always set to false when sending data to test.

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<head> <script type="text/javascript" src="//libs.coremetrics.com/eluminate.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> cmSetClientID("69999999",false,"testdata.coremetrics.com","thesite.com); </script> </head>

The following page is pointed to the production environment.

<script type="text/javascript"> cmSetClientID ("99999999",true,"data.coremetrics.com","thesite.com"); </script>

All Pages
Each distinct page visited by the visitor needs to throw a single Page View tag. For example:
<script type="text/javascript"> cmCreatePageviewTag("HOME PAGE"); </script>

Product Detail Pages

Each product page needs to throw the Page View tag. In Phase II, an additional product view tag may be added to support enhanced reporting. For example:
<script type="text/javascript"> cmCreatePageviewTag("PRODUCT: " + "<productname>") </script>

Order Confirmation Page

The order confirmation page needs to throw the following:

For example:

1 Page View tag 1 Create Order tag

<script type="text/javascript"> cmCreatePageviewTag("Confirm Order","90999", null); cmCreateOrderTag("ord-934343","212.85","9.99", "cust-09096","Austin","TX","78759"); </script>

Tags Phase I
This section covers the format and parameters of each Phase I tag and the reports in which information from the tag is used.

Page View Tag

Key Reports Populated: Dashboards; Site Metrics; Marketing; Content (Page Categories, * Pages, On-Site Search); Paths; Demographics (Geography, Languages, Profile Segments); Report Segments The Page View tag should be rendered on all pages. The format of the tag is:
cmCreatePageviewTag(<Page ID>,null,<Onsite Search Term>,<Search Term Results>);

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NOTE: The 2 parameter should be null until such time as Phase II implementation is undertaken. This is the placeholder for a future category ID parameter supporting multi-level hierarchical categorization of pageview and merchandising activity. Parameter Page ID Required Required Description All page IDs must be unique for all pages tracked in Coremetrics and representative of the content displayed. An alphanumeric string identifying the immediate parent node to which this page belongs. This must match the category ID designated within the CDF file. Note that category IDs can be dynamically assigned to add addition value to reports. If this page was displayed due to an onsite search, this field will show the search term used. The number of results returned if this page was displayed due to an onsite search. If no results are returned, 0 should be passed. Up to 15 -_- delimited attribute values accessible in Explore reporting. See Appendix 8.4 for more details. Up to 15 -_- delimited extrafield values accessible through optional Standard Data Export. If desired, these values can be automatically copied from the Attribute String by calling cmSetupOther ({"cmAutoCopyAttributesToExtraFields":true}); on the page prior to tag function calls.

nd

Category ID

Required

Onsite Search Term Search Results Attribute String Extra Fields

Optional

Optional

Optional

Optional

Order Tag
Key Reports Populated: All aggregate Sales and Order metrics outside of the Products Reporting; Demographics (Profile Segments). It should be generated on pages where an order is confirmed. The format of the tag is:
cmCreateOrderTag(<Order ID>,<Order Subtotal>,<Order Shipping Amount>,<Customer ID>,<Customer City>,<Customer State>,<Customer Zip>)

Parameter Order ID Order Subtotal Order Shipping Amount Customer ID Customer City Customer State or Province

Required Required Required Required

Description A unique order identifier. Complete order subtotal not including any shipping and handling or taxes. Shipping and handling for this order

Required Optional Optional

Unique customer identifier. Customers City. Customers State or Province.

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Customer Postal Code Attribute String

Optional Optional

Customer Postal Code. Up to 15 -_- delimited attribute values accessible in Explore reporting. See Appendix 8.4 for more details. Up to 15 -_- delimited extrafield values accessible through optional Standard Data Export. If desired, these values can be automatically copied from the Attribute String by calling cmSetupOther ({"cmAutoCopyAttributesToExtraFields":true}); on the page prior to tag function calls.

Extra Fields

Optional

Technical Properties Tags

The Technical Properties tag is automatically executed on the first page of the visitors session. Therefore there is no need to manually execute the Technical Properties tag. The Technical Properties tag gathers technical information about the visitors system. This includes browser type, operating system, monitor resolution and depth, and JavaScript version among other values.

Implementation Checklist
1 2 3 Create NS records in DNS (for Coremetrics-Managed first party data collection only) Place Javascript library file src= include and tagging code on pages Perform unit testing on each tag type and major site section using Tagbar, ITT, and Test Reports

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Testing Phase I
Testing for Phase I involves checking testing tool data output for the following things: 1. Correct Page View tags on all pages a. 2. Correct and expected Page ID values

Correct Order tag on all order completion pages (typically a single receipt page per site sending data). a. Correct Order ID, Order Total, Order Shipping, Customer ID, and demographic City/State or Province/Postal Code data

The TagBar
The TagBar is described in Page 9 above. It should be used to test each page as it is created and rendered to ensure all tags within the page are working and passing the required values to Coremetrics.

The Implementation Test Tool (ITT)

Description
The Implementation Test Tool is a web-based interface that allows a client to see what data has reached the test.coremetrics.com environment. Data is sent to Test and ITT system by calling the cmSetClientID() function using the 6series test ID. During development of Coremetrics tags, the Implementation Test Tool should be used periodically to verify that the data sent in the tags is reaching the Coremetrics test environment in the appropriate format. Data received through tags will usually be displayed in the Implementation Test Tool within minutes of being sent. Only data for the current day will be available, as the data gets rolled off at the end of each day at 10:00pm CDT.

Where to find it
The Implementation Test Tool can be accessed at http://itt.coremetrics.com. You will be asked to provide a user name and password to access the site. Please contact the Implementation Support Team for assistance with ITT login credentials.

How to use it
ITT requires the user to fill in certain information and choose which set of data is to be accessed. The fields that must be entered are: Client ID Cookie ID The client specific id assigned by Coremetrics for the particular site. Select one of the three options: All Cookies will show data for all activity. Other Cookie will show data for the specific cookie id entered in the field. The date/time of the data to be accessed. If left blank this will retrieve all data available. Note: Only data for the current day is available, since the data gets rolled off every day Specifies the type of data the user is interested in seeing from ITT. Most of these types correspond with specific Coremetrics tags.

Date range

Data Type

Please direct any questions you may have about these input values to your Implementation Engineer.

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Test Reports
Description
Coremetrics test reports are available upon request from Coremetrics Support. This subset of production reports is used to evaluate test site data collection and reporting prior to production launch. Activation or re-activation of test reporting can be requested from [email protected]. Test report data retention period is limited to five weeks. Only data up to five weeks in the past can be accessed in the test reporting. Test reports are automatically deactivated and all test data deleted if either of the following conditions are met for 30 consecutive days: 1) no logon to the associated 6-series test ID has occured; 2) no data has been sent to the 6-series test ID.

Where to find them

Coremetrics test reports can be accessed at: http://welcome.coremetrics.com Use your 6-series test ID to log on. Please contact Coremetrics Support in order to get access to these reports.

How to use them

In order to access the test reports, you must enter the Client id, username, and password. Once logged in, you will be taken to the reporting interface. The reports that will be most useful during the tagging phase will be the Topline Summary, Content Analysis and On Site Search reports.

Implementation Checklist
1 2 3 4 5 Request test tag validation from Coremetrics Correct issues identified by test tag validation Client business users sign off on test report data Complete internal QA process to approve code for push to production Confirm correct data collection domain setup (for Coremetrics-Managed first party data collection only)

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Go Live Phase I
Test vs. Production Environments
Coremetrics provides two environments for clients to use test and production. The test environment, testdata.coremetrics.com, should be used while tags on the site are in development, i.e. in your development or staging st environments. The production environment, data.coremetrics.com or your assigned Coremetrics-Managed 1 Party Subdomain, should be used once the tags are moved to the live production site.

Deploy to Production
The following page is pointed to the production environment.
<script type="text/javascript"> cmSetClientID ("99999999",true,"data.coremetrics.com","thesite.com"); </script>

Check with TagBar

Once the code had been deployed to the production environment the TagBar tool should be used again to ensure the right data is being sent.

Implementation Checklist
1 2 3 4 Push tagging code to live environment and confirm that live site data is going to correct data collection domain and Client ID. Request production tag validation Correct any tagging issues identified in production tag validation Evaluate Commerce Metrics in http://welcome.coremetrics.com test reporting - Reports / Site Metrics / Top Line Metrics: Sales and Order metrics. The number of Orders and the Sales amount reported should correspond to the orders and sales as seperately reported by your ecommerce site or other available financial reporting. Evaluate LIVEview reporting and correct normalization as necessary Request Report Walkthrough from Coremetrics Request data deletion as necessary (please provide at least 48 hours notice) Send acknowledgement of Phase I project completion to Implementation Engineer and Implementation Manager Implementation Engineer will provide administrator logon access to production reports and request scheduling of Phase I Implementation Training

5 6 7 8 9

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Appendix A - Tagging Framed Pages

Pages that are going to be part of a frameset require requires special considerations. An additional Coremetrics include file is required in the parent frameset of the framed page. This include file, cmframeset.js, contains code to set the referral URL and pass on important query string parameters from the parent frameset to the first Page View of its children.

Referral URL
Because of the way browsers work, all children pages within a frameset appear to have the same referral URL of the parent frameset. Since one of the standard Coremetrics conventions of tagging uses the referral URL provided by the browser for the tags, the cmframeset.js file has been created to properly get the referral URL within framed pages to be the URL for the tags.

Query String Parameters

Certain query string parameters for parent framesets must be captured within Coremetrics Page View tags. However these query string parameters are never passed because the parent frameset does not have a tag in it. In order to capture these parameters, they must be passed into the first Page View tag sent by any of its children. An example of query string parameters that need to be captured by Coremetrics are Marketing Management Center (MMC) parameters (see Appendix B). External campaigns that point to a framed page will need to contain MMC parameters within their query string in order to attribute clickthroughs and activity to the campaign. These parameters must be captured by the first Page View in the visitors session. Because the parent frameset contains the MMC parameters in its destination URL but does not send a tag, the MMC parameters must be passed on to one of the children pages that does throw a tag. The cmframeset.js file contains code to parse out the MMC parameters and attach them to the URL of the first Page View tag thrown by its children. This enables MMC tracking to occur correctly. Other query string parameters can be passed on to the children Page Views in the same manner. In order to do this, a simple change must be made to the cmframeset.js file. Please consult your Implementation Engineer to make this change if necessary.

Examples
The following is an example of a frameset that includes the cmframeset.js file.
<html> <script language="javascript1.2" src="cmframeset.js"></script> <frameset cols="50%,50%"> <frame src="body.html" name="body"> <frameset rows="100,* "> <frame src="nav.html" name="nav"> <frame src="footer.html" name="footer"> </frameset> </frameset> </html>

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Appendix B Link Tracking

This section describes how to track links through Coremetrics. Link tracking takes place through the use of URL query string parameters that indicate particular links that you want to track. Coremetrics sets aside a set of specific query string parameters to be used. The type of link that will need to be tracked will dictate which type of query string parameter to use. Typically, the link tracking described in this section is handled post-implementation. This information is included here so that you can start planning for how to add the appropriate URL parameters into links that you want to track. The Coremetrics Account Team is available to provide guidance on these subjects in more detail during your training and other postimplementation activities.

External Marketing Campaigns

In order to track clickthroughs from links in external marketing campaigns like banner ads, paid search, or promotional emails, you should take advantage of the Marketing Programs report. By appending a Marketing Programs parameter to the query string of the links you want to track, called the MMC parameter, the system will automatically identify and attribute the activity of that visitor to the appropriate link. The MMC parameter must be in the destination URL of the first Coremetrics tagged page that the visitor lands on in order to be tracked. No special JavaScript tagging is needed on the page, however, so long as the Coremetrics libraries and a Page View tag are present on the page. For the format of the URL parameter and instructions on its use, please see the Coremetrics Link Generator spreadsheet. Your Implementation Engineer or Account Analyst can provide this tool if you do not have it.

Onsite Links
Tracking onsite links through Coremetrics can be done using the Real Estate or Site Promotions reports. The type of link that you want to track will dictate which report to use. Both will involve using URL parameters similar to the MMC parameter. The Real Estate Analysis report is used to track links within the same page to see how certain areas of a given page perform with relation to each other. Links are tracked by adding a new parameter to the URL query string. The Site Promotions report can be used to track the performance of a link across multiple pages. This can be useful if you want to track promotions that you have running on your site across multiple pages. Site Promotions will capture impressions as well as clickthroughs of the promotions. For more information on the specific URL parameters required for Real Estate and Site Promotions analysis, please see the Coremetrics Link Generator spreadsheet.

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Appendix C External Page Tagging

Introduction
Coremetrics tracks data at the browser level. Data is captured when a page on your site is rendered within the end users browser. As the page is rendered, JavaScript code function calls, or Tags, placed in the page will gather data and encapsulate it in an image request that is sent to the Coremetrics servers. These tags are sent in two ways. Either the appropriate tag is called from within the web page (as covered in the previous sections of this document) or the eluminate library sends a tag as the result of a web page event such as a link click or a form submit. These methods cannot be used to track external site pages, pdf files, and other pages that cannot call the Coremetrics javascript libraries or where the HTML content cannot be changed to add the Coremetrics Pageview Tag. Because it is not possible to send tags from within the target, a tag must be sent using the onClick event of the object that calls the target page. As described earlier, Coremetrics tracks pages using the Pageview tag. Any page that is tracked by Coremetrics needs to call a Pageview tag or one of the tags that implicitly call a Pageview tag. The Pageview tag has a minimum of two parameters, the unique PageID and the optional CategoryID. Other parameters may be supplied depending upon the page being a search page or depending on other customizations specific to the client. The Pageview tag also collects the Destination URL and the Referring URL from the page it is called from. However, as the Pageview tag cannot be in the external page, these values cannot be collected. The Manual Pageview tag allows these additional values to be supplied as parameters. The Manual Pageview parameters all refer to the external page.

The pageID should be a unique identifier for the external page. The categoryID should be the category for the external page. The ReferringURL should be the url for the page on which the link to the external page resides. The DestinationURL should be the url including arguments for the external page.

If the external page is a search landing page, the searchTerm can pass the search term being sent to the external page. Some Client IDs may be configured with a Client Domain List. This is a list of approved domains for the Coremetrics servers. Tags for that Client ID will be rejected unless the domain in the destination url value is on the Client Domain List. If a Client Domain List is enabled, rejection of tags may be avoided by adding the external domain to the white list. It is not always possible to add the domain of the external page to the Client Domain List as the domains for external pages may vary with time and keeping the Client Domain List current is problematic. The number of external domains is also a factor. Using a destination url parameter with a domain that is on the Client Domain List and a dummy folder allows the tag to be accepted. The existence of these dummy folders in the Coremetrics reports will indicate that this was an external page. The syntax for this tag is:
cmCreateManualPageviewTag(pageID, categoryID,DestinationURL,ReferringURL,searchTerm);

where: pageId is the unique identifier for the external page categoryID is the reporting category of the page DestinationURL is the URL address of the external page ReferringURL is the URL address of the page that contains the link to the external page that calls the tag If the external page is a search landing page, the searchTerm is the search string being sent to that page.

Example
This example sets an onClick handler to a link that calls an Adobe Acrobat file:
cmCreateManualPageviewTag(pageID,categoryID,DestinationURL, ReferringURL) <A HREF='\documents\FAQ.pdf' onClick='cmCreateManualPageviewTag("FAQ Pdf","PDF Files","http://www.mysite.com/faq.pdf", "http://www.mysite.com/help.html);"'>FAQ Document</a>

Note that you must use single quotes in the <A> tag and double quotes inside the cmCreatePageviewTag function.

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Appendix D Coremetrics Reports - Tag Matrix

Blue columns indicate tag data collected with Phase I tagging Reports not populated by Phase I tagging will not be available until Phase II tagging is deployed Yellow columns indicate tag data collected with Phase II tagging

Page View Top Line Metrics Monitor Visitor Purchase Funnel Session Purchase Funnel Session Event Funnel Geography Technical Properties Marketing Channels Marketing Programs Marketing Zoom Natural Search Referring Sites Multi-Source Marketing Product Categories Product Zoom Top Browsed Items Top Abandoned Items Cross Sold Items Onsite Search Page Categories X X X

Order X X X

Tech Props

Link Click

Link Impn

Form Action

Product View X X X

Shop Action

Reg. X

Element Tag

Event Tag X

X X

X X

X X X X X X

X X X

X X X X X X X X X X X

X X X

X X X X X X X

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Page View Page Zoom Top Visited Pages Top Entry Pages Top Departure Pages Real Estate Site Promotions Elements Click Stream True Path Form Analysis Form Analysis Zoom LIVEview Inbound Link Analysis On-Site Link Analysis Report Segments Segmentati on Overview Tab Segmentati on - Top Pages Tab Segmentati on - Top Items Tab Segmentati on - Email Extract Segmentati on - Visitor Tab Segmentati on - Buyer Tab X X X X X X X

Order

Tech Props

Link Click

Link Impn

Form Actio n

Product View

Shop Actio n

Reg.

Element Tag

Event Tag

X X

X X

X X

X X X

X X

X X X X X

X X

X X

X X

X X

X X

X X

X X

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Appendix E Parameters and Tags

This table shows the parameters passed to Coremetrics and the tags that pass them. R = Required O = Optional Blue Rows and fields indicate tags and tag parameters applicable to Phase I. All other tags and parameters are implemented as part of Phase II. Page View Action Type Category ID Customer City Customer Email Customer ID Customer State Customer Zip Element Category Element ID Event Category ID Event ID Event Points Order ID Order Shipping Order Subtotal Page ID Product ID Product Name Quantity Search Results Search Term Unit Price R R R R R R O O R R R R R R R R R R O O R Order Prod. View Shop Action 5 R Shop Action 9 R O O R O O R R R R O Reg. Error Element Event R R O R O

R R

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Appendix F Phase I Implementation Checklist

Design
1 Received assigned Client IDs

2 3

Choose data collection subdomain and send SSL Cert information to Coremetrics (for Coremetrics-Managed first party data collection only) Create convention for PageIDs, OrderID and CustomerID

Development 4 Create NS records in DNS (for Coremetrics-Managed first party data collection only) 5 Place Javascript library src= includes and tagging code on pages 6 Perform unit testing on each tag type and major site section using Tagbar, ITT, and Test Reports Testing 7 8 9 10 Go-Live 11 12 13 14 Request test tag validation from Coremetrics Correct issues identified by test tag validation Client business users sign off on test report data Complete internal QA process to approve code for push to production Push tagging code to live environment and confirm that live site data is going to correct data collection domain and Client ID. Request production tag validation Correct any tagging issues identified in production tag validation Evaluate Commerce Metrics in http://welcome.coremetrics.com test reporting - Reports / Site Metrics / Top Line Metrics: Sales and Order metrics. The number of Orders and the Sales amount reported should correspond to the orders and sales as seperately reported by your ecommerce site or other available financial reporting. Evaluate LIVEview reporting and correct normalization as necessary Request Report Walkthrough from Coremetrics Request data deletion as necessary (please provide at least 48 hours notice) Send acknowledgement of Phase I project completion to Implementation Engineer and Implementation Manager Implementation Engineer will provide administrator logon access to production reports and request scheduling of Phase I Implementation Training

15 16 17 18 19

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