New version of User Tracking Interface (1.5) has been released. Changes:
UTI v1.5 has been tested with Zen Cart 1.3.8a but it should also work with newer versions. Update instructions for v1.1 users are included in .zip package.
User Tracking Interface version 1.5 will be released next week. There are few important bug fixes, some performance improvements and new features. In nutshell:
Randomized Tests version 1.3 introduces new feature – custom impression functions. It allows You to decide who and under what conditions participates in A/B split test. In this post I would like to show You how to create custom impression detection function and how to use it to speed up experiments.
Let’s assume that You want to change Your registration page. You hope that new version will ease process of registration and more customers will register/order. You want to include in experiment only those visitors that actually viewed ‘Register’ page and remove from experiment those visitors that never intended to register / make purchase and never visited ‘Register’ page. Why? Because You can get more accurate results more quickly. Let me show it to You on example.
Let’s assume that Your site gets 1000 visits daily (excluding bots). Of those 1000 visitors only 100 intend to buy anything ( other visitors are just surfing, comparing prices or doing anything else – they are not customers). Those 100 visitors get to ‘Register’ page where You already set up A/B split test with two versions of the page. You know – from Google Analytics or anywhere else – that old version of the page (version A or control group) has 20% conversion rate. You expect new version of the page to have 40% conversion rate. How quickly will You know that the new page is better? Here’s comparison of default IDF vs custom IDF:
| Group | Visitors | Impressions | Conversions | Conv. Rate | Duration |
| Group #A | 500 | 500 | 10 | 2% | 6.41 days |
| Group #B | 500 | 500 | 20 | 4% |
| Group | Visitors | Impressions | Conversions | Conv. Rate | Duration |
| Group #A | 500 | 50 | 10 | 20% | 5.66 days |
| Group #B | 500 | 50 | 20 | 40% |
As You can see from this simple example there’s 15% decrease in duration of experiment. In other scenarios improvement may be even better.
Randomized Tests can make use of any function that:
Ok, so let’s create such function and upload it to /includes/functions/extra_functions:
First, function checks if currently visited page is ‘create_account’ page – We want impression to occur only on registration form page (which in Zen Cart is ‘create_account’ page). Impression should occur only once per visitor so function checks using UTI if visitor already viewed ‘create_account’ page. If he didn’t function does two things:
If visitor already visited ‘create_account’ page impression does not occur and function returns FALSE.
Now upload the function to includes/functions/extra_functions and create experiment that uses it to detect impression.
Let’s modify ‘Create Account’ page. We just want to test two versions of ‘Create Account’ page so I used ‘Standard Groupset’ (Admin->Tools->[RT] Groupsets) as groupset. Standard Groupset has two groups: control group (id ‘cg’) and test group (id ‘tg’).
If visitor has been assigned to control group (‘cg’) old version of page is displayed. In other case new ‘Create Account’ page is used.
Go to Admin->Tools-> [RT] Experiments page. Create new experiment as usually. In ‘Impression Detection Function‘ box paste name of Your impression detection function: ‘visited_create_account_page_rt_idf’ (without braces). Click on ‘Create’. That’s it!
Visit Your site and check that impression only occurs on first visit to ‘Create Account’ page.
That’s it. If anything isn’t clear please post comment.
It’s mainly bug fix release. Update is STRONGLY recommended.
Changelog:
You can download it from: UTI v1.1
It seems that I’ve forgotten to add installation commands to the sql installation file and there are no options under ‘UTI Variables’ in Configuration Menu. To Go to Admin->Tools->Install SQL patches and execute following commands:
UTI is tiny module that tracks visitors to Zen Cart site even if they aren’t logged in or even never created any account. It allows developers to keep in UTI memory small amounts of information about each visitor. For example, UTI can be used to store list of recently viewed products by any particular user. UTI will remember this information and when the visitor will come back to Zen Cart store week later UTI will recognize him and present list of previously viewed products.
UTI takes care of:
UTI does not store any personal information in visitors browser.
UTI is very simple class. It creates global $uti object that contains all information about current visitor. From developer point of view UTI class has four methods:
$uti is automatically instantiated through auto_loaders/ mechanism. Developer can use it in any function/class since it’s global variable.
To show how easy it is to use UTI and what it can be used for I’ve created simple contributions that:
Example contributions are included in UTI package. You can download it here: current version of UTI.
In next blog post I’ll describe how I’ve created one of those contributions using UTI.
I’ve created User Tracking Interface (UTI) module for Zen Cart v1.3.8 which recognizes visitors (even if they are not logged in or don’t have account) and stores simple bits of information about them in database. You can use UTI to store such information as favorite currency of each visitor, recently viewed products by particular visitor or recently searched products. The best thing is that even if the visitor will leave Your site and will come back later UTI will recognize him/her and will set site to his/hers preferences.
You can test it Yourself on demo store here:
www.data-diggers.com/contribs/uti/demo-stores/with-uti/
Recently viewed products, recent search terms and user default currency are nice features, but they are just examples of use of UTI. UTI is simple class which developers can use to make user aware contributions. UTI takes care of recognizing users and storing/retrieving information about them in/from database. UTI attaches itself to Zen Cart on each request and creates $uti variable which developers can use to store simple information about visitors in database.
UTI has very simple interface. Developer should use only two methods:
Developer does not have to worry about creating $uti object. $uti object will automatically recognize user and will retrieve all information about him from database.
UTI is tool which can be used to create very simple contributions, for example:
Please test above site and report any bugs. You can also install current version of UTI on Your site and report any bugs. You can download current version of UTI here:
www.data-diggers.com/contribs/uti/downloads/uti-current.zip
Installation instructions are in uti-current.zip
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Jan 23 5 comments
admin says: It doesn't matter if You write 'select a,b,c,d,e from table' or 'select * from table'.
131 days ago
158 days ago
admin says: Thanks! TurboImages will be relased within two weeks I think.. Documentation may be scarce though ;)
158 days ago
Sebastian says: Your add on significantly reduced queries from 1500 to 147 oncertain product info pages with complex atributes and price factors I'm testing ...
208 days ago
