Data validation at Coveo Qubit

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Developer

In this article, we’ll discuss the validation we perform on your data to ensure it’s of the highest quality.

Why validate?

Qubit conducts many forms of initial, ongoing, and ad-hoc data validation, focusing heavily on transactions. The purpose of this validation is to ensure you get the accurate data you need to drive your decision making and inform your personalization efforts within our platform.

We can deliver that accuracy only if the data reaching us from the visitor interactions with your site is of high quality, and this is particularly true for conversions.

It is of paramount importance that the conversion data you send us through QProtocol events is accurate; it is critical to the reporting of conversions and revenue for each of your Qubit experiences.

Initial validation

We perform a straightforward initial validation process to verify that data flows accurately from visitor interactions with your site.

The specific aims are to check that the setup is correct and that there are no obvious problems around cookie persistence, browser dependencies, or the implementation of QProtocol and Smartserve on the site.

The key check is on conversions, so we focus on that.

You should also conduct validation of your Qubit setup using our Explorer tool and the Validation dashboard. These tools will highlight various types of error that can arise in the emission of events from your site.

Conversions

We need to check that the information we receive for each transaction or other conversion event is correct. We aim to conduct a thorough comparison of a week’s worth of orders against your backend data. We will also compare each transaction against any analytics tools, such as Google Analytics (GA), that you use and make available to us. See below.

We seek to match each order and its revenue figure. Any significant discrepancies are investigated and resolved in our platform, if possible. Results are reported to you for comment and appropriate rectification if necessary.

Ongoing validation of conversions

To provide confidence that full conversion data continues to reach us, validation against backend data should ideally be repeated every quarter. The need for this can be obviated by regular validation against analytics data.

Use of analytics data

Most clients provide Qubit with access to their GA data. This gives us tools to support our validation of transactions and helps us to alert and more broadly validate our data collection.

Providing access to Qubit gives the following benefits:

  • Qubit can assess any discrepancies that may appear in our validation of transactions against backend data

    • If Qubit’s transaction data matches GA’s closely then our collection is likely to be valid; orders missing from comparison with the backend are likely to be due to an external cause

  • Qubit can thoroughly investigate any error in implementation that may cause differences between transactions it receives and GA/backend

    • We will research aspects such as specific device types, browsers, subdomains, national sites, payment methods, or products

    • These breakdowns will usually enable diagnosis of a problem and remedial action

  • Qubit will set up and monitor an automatic daily comparison of transactions and revenue against GA, usually covering a window of one week

    • A normal score of 99% or above obviates the need to revalidate regularly against backend data, saving resources for both you and Qubit

    • A fall in the score will alert Qubit to investigate the cause and allow us to initiate appropriate action to restore full dataflow of conversions

  • Qubit will set up and monitor a further automatic comparison of daily pageview, visitor, and session numbers with GA data

    • This covers both totals (typically over two weeks) and a daily breakdown for each property, including conversions and revenue, which is critical for establishing the timing of any problem that may have arisen.

  • We may use access to GA conversion, view, and event data to improve or enhance products provided to our clients.

Note

Clients may choose to provide Qubit with access to analytics data in a platform other than GA for validation purposes. Qubit’s automatic processing is limited to GA.

Other ongoing validation

You can conduct validation of your Qubit setup at any stage using our Explorer tool and the Validation dashboard. These tools will highlight various types of error that can arise in the emission of events from your site.

We routinely check for incorrectly formatted transaction events that are rejected by our Gatekeeper as invalid. These cannot be counted as conversions.

More detailed data validation will be undertaken by our Quality Assurance team if you or we have concerns about any aspect of data integrity or accuracy. This may arise from a support ticket, a report to a Customer Success Manager, preparation for using a new Qubit product, or an alert from automatic validation. The execution may well include comparison with GA data. It might include searching for and eliminating bot traffic.

Note

For clients using any non-standard form of conversion, such as events from call center tracking, we will work with the relevant provider to validate the completeness of the data it receives and ensure it features appropriately in Qubit dashboard results.

Data protection

All access by Qubit to data in GA is limited to necessity and is subject to Qubit’s policies. The data available to Qubit through GA is very much less than data already stored in Qubit from visitor interactions with your site. Indeed, when all is working properly, it represents a small subset of the data held by Qubit.

Qubit accesses GA through the account analysis@qubit.com. We revoke our access when a client is no longer using Qubit products.