Configuring Where Campaign Changes are Applicable Using the VWO Editor

Purpose of the Applicability Setting in VWO

Have you ever had to apply the same set of changes to an element present across your website? For example, applying changes to the newly added Try & Buy button present across your website to assess its performance.

If so, VWO's default configuration will suffice. It extends modifications made on any page to all campaign pages, as long as the modified element is present on the page. As a result, visitors will see the modified element whenever they arrive on any test page.

Often, in your multi-page campaigns, you may encounter instances where the modification you want to make is only intended for specific pages or devices rather than all. For example, you might want to examine how embedding videos for various product categories affect your website. In this case, each category will have its own video that is distinct from the others.

This is where VWO Editor's Applicability of Modifications settings will help you gain more control over where the changes are applied. You can access this setting from the Editor Settings > Applicability of modifications section of the VWO Editor. 

We are gradually enabling this feature for our customers. If this is not yet available on your account, please write to us at support@vwo.com.

In the scenario described above, you would like to ensure changes are Specific to each page so that you can define modifications to individual pages. Likewise, changes can also be defined for each device's version of the page, whether it's a desktop, mobile, or tablet.

Let’s understand the different applicability options offered by VWO.

Applicability Options Offered by VWO 

The Applicability of modifications feature in VWO comes with the following two configurations:

• If your campaign involves multiple pages, choose either of the following based on your requirements:
  

• • Common for all pages
    If you want to apply common changes to all campaign pages, select this option. For example, if you apply a change to the “Try it” button on page A of your campaign and select this setting, it will be applied to all other campaign pages where this button is present.
    
    
  • Specific to each page
    If you want to apply changes to specific pages of your campaign, select this option, i.e., if your campaign has three pages, the modification on page one will only be applied to page one, and so on. For example, when modifying the description of a product category, you would want to change it separately for each product page because it can't be the same for all. For this, you can navigate to individual product category pages within the Editor and define changes on each of them individually.
    
    The Specific to each page configuration comes with an additional setting- Consider query parameters in the URL, enabling you to apply unique changes to a URL carrying a specific set of query parameters. The changes you specify will only be implemented for visitors who have the same parameters. This enables you to create distinct experiences for visitors who arrive at the website via a predetermined URL condition.
    Consider an e-commerce website running a campaign for its premium customers by sending a special link via email. When a visitor arrives on the campaign URL via this link, a query parameter is appended to the URL (for example, <URL>?param=promotional+email), and he is presented with a discount coupon on the checkout page.
    
    If the visitor arrives at the website via a link other than the one in the email, the promotional+email string will not be present in the query parameter, or if the campaign URL is viewed without any query params, the specific set of changes will not be applied.
    
    To cater to such scenarios, we recommend using the Consider query parameters in the URL option. The campaign will look for the parameter condition and only apply modifications if there’s an exact match.
    
    NOTE: When the Consider query parameters in the URL setting is enabled, the campaign changes are only applied if the query parameters match exactly; a partial match is not considered. For example, if you configure campaign changes on <URL>?param=promotional+email, then the changes will not apply if the visitor lands on <URL>?param=promotional+email&utm_medium=cpc.

• If your campaign runs on multiple devices, choose either of the following based on your requirements:
  

• Common for all devices
  Consider a case where you want to replace the “Add to bag” button on your e-commerce website with “Add to cart” across devices, including desktop, mobile, and tablet. To do so, we recommend making this text change on any of the device types and selecting the Common for all devices setting. This automatically applies the change across all device types where this element is present.
  
  
• Specific to each device
  The above setting might not work if you are trying to make specific changes that relate to web page responsiveness across devices. For example, let’s say you rearrange some content on the desktop view of your website. Now, if you use the Common for all devices setting, then the rearrangement is automatically applied to the tablet and mobile views as well.
  
  However, when the layout of your page expands or shrinks depending on the resolution of the user’s screen, this change may break the design of the mobile or tablet device, resulting in unexpected arrangements and inconsistency. To cater to this, we recommend selecting the Specific to each device setting in such cases, to differentiate which content appears on which devices so that visitors using different devices can get precisely tailored alterations.
  
  You can use the Change Device option (refer to the screenshot below) of the VWO Editor to switch between different device types and define changes for each of them.

How to Configure the Applicability Setting in the VWO Editor?

To enable the desired applicability setting in VWO:

Procedure

1. Go to the VWO Editor.
2. Choose the desired applicability setting from the SETTINGS > Applicability of modifications section. To learn how to apply changes using Editor, refer to How to Use Editor to Create Variations.
3. Once done, click SAVE.