Test your segments

This is for:

Developer

In this article, we’ll show you how to test your segments using the Qubit Explorer.

Before getting started

As a quick recap, in Testing your simple segment and Validating your advanced segment, we explored some of the in-app tools and methods at your disposal for making sure your segments work according to design.

In this article, we’ll explore this further by looking at how you can use the Qubit Explorer to test your segment logic and force your "virtual visitor" in and out of segments to see how the visitor journey is affected.

What is the Qubit Explorer and what can I use it for?

The Qubit Explorer is a feature-rich tool that brings together three key views to give you the perfect overview of what’s happening on your site:

  • Segments - understand what segments your "virtual" user is a member of as you navigate through your site and interact with experiences

  • Experiences - check the state of each experience, jump into specific experiences, or preview multiple experiences simultaneously. See Using Qubit Explorer to preview your experience

  • Events - see which events are being triggered as you interact with your site and any live and draft experience. See Using Qubit Explorer to validate your setup

Note

Qubit Explorer is supported by the latest versions of Internet Explorer, Edge, Firefox, and Chrome browsers. See Browser compatibility for more information about the browsers we support.
Note

To use the explorer in Safari on mobile devices you’ll need to disable Prevent Cross-site tracking. Once done, close and relaunch Safari.

Starting the Explorer

Whilst we work on improving the workflow around starting the Explorer, specifically when working on segments, the simplest way of starting it, is to append ?qubit_explorer or #qubit_explorer to your site’s URL, e.g. www.mywebsite.com?qubit_explorer.

Once your site loads, you’ll find an on-page prompt:

prompt

Select this to open the explorer and then select Segments

Viewing segments

In the Segments view, we can see which segments, both simple and advanced, the current visitor is a member of–as a tester, you play the role of a "virtual visitor".

In the following example, we see the visitor is a member of six segments, including Returning new customer and Engaged non purchasers:

segment-membership-1

As you move through your site, generating data and triggering events, we will continuously evaluate the segment logic in real time and report changes in segment membership.

As an example, look what happens when we now visit a PDP in the product category Shirts:

segment-membership-2

To exercise control of what happens on your site as you navigate through it, and especially over which experiences are fired as segment membership changes, you can force users in and out of segments. This is a useful technique if you are testing how segment membership affects the "visitor experience" through your site.

To force your user in and out of segments, select Configure overrides at the bottom of the Explorer side bar and select one of the following options from the IN SEGMENT column:

  • Auto - Consider segment logic and the data and activities associated with the visitor when determining segment membership (default state)

  • Yes - Ignore segment logic, data, and activities and force the user into the segment

  • No - Ignore segment logic, data, and activities, and force the user out of the segment

To apply your changes, select Apply overrides

In the following example, the user has chosen to force the user into Viewed Shirts and out of Segment 1:

force out

and can then see the impact on the journey through their site.