Create a Recommendations activity

Click Create Activity > Recommendations.

Select Visual (Default), if necessary.

If you prefer to use the Form-Based Experience Composer, select Form. See Form-Based Experience Composer for more information.

(Conditional) If you are a Target Premium customer, choose a workspace.

Specify an activity URL, and then click Next.

The activity URL is the page where the recommendations will be displayed.

When you click Next, the VEC opens and shows your page. You can replace a current element with recommendations, or insert recommendations.

Click an element on your page, then if recommendations are available where that element is located, click Replace w/ Recommendations, Insert Recommendations Before, or Insert Recommendations After.

Visitors to your site will see the recommended content only if they qualify for the recommendation. Visitors who do not qualify for the recommendation will see default content.

• Replace w/ Recommendations: Replacing an element with recommendations deletes the current content and replaces it with your recommendations. When visitors visit your site and qualify for the recommendation, they’ll see the recommended items in the specified area instead of the existing content.
• Insert Recommendations Before: Inserting recommendations before the selected element places the recommended content before that element. Depending on your page construction, the recommendation displays above or to the left of the selected element.
• Insert Recommendations After: Inserting recommendations after the selected element places the recommended content after that element. Depending on your page construction, the recommendation displays below or to the right of the selected element.

The Expand Selection option lets you expand the selected location (parent container) to help you easily identify and include the desired page elements more easily.

Select a page type.

Page types can include:

• Cart Page
• Category Page
• Home Page
• Landing Page
• Product Page
• Search Results Page
• Thank You Page
• Other

Select one or more criteria.

Criteria are displayed as cards that show information about each criteria. By default, the Select Criteria screen displays criteria that are compatible with your industry vertical and the page type you selected in the previous step. You can change these options to display other criteria.

If you select multiple criteria, traffic is split evenly between the selected criteria. For example, if you have selected two criteria and your activity is designed to display default content to 20% of activity entrants, then 40% of activity entrants will see the recommendations controlled by each criteria. There is no option to change the percentages for each criteria.

• To search for an existing criteria (for example, if a large number of criteria cards are displayed), type in the search field until the desired criteria appears, then select the criteria and click Next.

  Some criteria are supplied with Recommendations. You and your team can also create your own custom criteria.

• To create a new criteria, click Create Criteria > Create Criteria, then fill in the information for the new criteria. For information about creating new criteria, see Creating Criteria.

• You can also group criteria into sequences. To create a new criteria sequence, click Create Criteria > Create Criteria Sequence. See Create Criteria Sequence for more information.

Click Next.

Select a design.

A design is a template that determines the look of the locations on your page. Target includes several pre-configured designs. You can also create your own custom designs. For more information, see Create a Design and Customizing a Design.

Each design shows a graphical representation of how it will look, and icons that show how many of your live and inactive activities currently use that design.

• To select one or more existing designs, click the designs, then click Next.

  If you selected multiple criteria, you can select only one design.

• To create a custom design, click Create Design, then fill in the name and code for the new design. Click Next, then select or upload an image and click Done > Done. For information about creating a new design, see Create a Design.

Click Next.

You have the option to add promotions to your recommendations. For more information about adding front and back promotions, see Adding Promotions.

Click Save.

The VEC screen displays the recommendation design on your page.

(Optional) Click Preview to see how the activity will appear to visitors.

Preview mode allows you to interact with your recommendations, much as a visitor would.

When you are finished previewing your recommendations, click Compose.

Review your recommendation in the VEC, then click Next.

Review your Recommendations activity in the flow diagram and make any necessary changes.

The flow diagram leads you through the steps of choosing the audience for the activity, setting up experiences, and specifying success metrics.

From the flow diagram, you can do the following:

• Change the audience that will see the recommendations

  note note
  NOTE
  In addition to selecting an existing audience, you can create an activity-only audience or combine multiple audiences to create ad hoc audiences rather than creating a new audience.

  By default, all users see the recommendations. However, you can target recommendation to a specific audience.

  For a Recommendations activity, the control group sees the page without any recommendations.

• View the criteria

• Change the collection (next to the Criteria label)

• Change the percentage of entrants who see the control experience

• View the design code

• Change or remove a design

Click Next when finished.

Specify your activity settings.

For example, type a name (required) and objective (optional) for the activity. For information about the settings, see Recommendations Activity Settings.

When finished, click Save & Close.

An overview of your activity is displayed.

From the Overview page, you can:

• Activate the activity
• Edit the activity
• Share the activity to your Experience Cloud feed
• QA the activity
• View your experience URLs
• Download data
• Change the percentage of activity entrants who see the control experience
• Show or hide criteria details
• View the code for your designs

(Optional) Open the Reports page to view the report that shows the performance of your Recommendations activity.

(Optional) Open the Collisions page to view any activity collisions that might occur.

Activity collisions occur when multiple activities are set to deliver content to the same page, and may cause unexpected content to be displayed.