Changes to Optimizely's Experimentation Platform

Optimizely is moving the processing of events from AWS to Google Cloud Platform. This change includes further modernization of how the data is collected and stored, to allow for future improvements and flexibility.

We have big plans for Optimizely Web Experimentation and Feature Experimentation, and this allows us to implement those plans gradually. The change in how events are collected will ensure that they are processed at a faster rate,
while maintaining the state in which they have been sent.

This will increase the reliability of our pipeline and processing, to further reduce discrepancies and provide even more reliable data. 

What changes are we making?

1. New event-scoped segmentation

We are updating the event segmentation on our results page to bring you more accurate and detailed insights. We are transitioning to event scope segmentation, where each event is categorized into a segment based on the attributes attached, such as “not logged in” or “logged in.” This shift provides a more genuine understanding of user interactions, ensuring your analysis and optimization strategies are more aligned with real user states and behaviors.

2. Updates to bot filtering

We are updating our bot filtering which will improve data quality and accuracy. We expect that user numbers in your experiments might decrease slightly due to more bots being filtered out, providing you more accurate and human driven conversions and interactions.

3. Updates to Enriched Event Export

We are removing session IDs from Enriched Event Export. We will not auto create session IDs in our own event pipeline as they are rarely used for outside analysis. Sessions are now calculated as part of experiment results to improve data accuracy.

Key Features

1. BigQuery

Simplified event ingestion at the query level, leveraging Google BigQuery. Optimizely Experimentation and Google BigQuery combined offer a market leading solution to allow easy access to advanced analytics for customers with large datasets.

2. Enhanced segmentation

Segmentation is the filtering of results, based on user characteristics. Our new ‘Event Scope’ feature delivers a more detailed group view of specific attribute values. This view crystalizes user actions in combination with
interactions of experiments that are conducted.

3. Bot filtering

Upgraded bot filtering to make sure that we are excluding unwanted traffic. This will provide more accurate results and understanding of actual user behavior by reducing bot traffic. 

FAQ

Q1: Will this change the way data is presented?
A: We are not introducing any changes to the way you are currently sending events and will not add any restrictions.

Q2: Will ‘Enriched Events Export’ change?
A: Session IDs will no longer be auto created. The location and means of exporting will not change in this update but may change in later releases.

Q3: Will events API change?
A: Nothing changes for the events API; the documentation is still as explained in the document below and will be used by our products and can be used directly by our customers if they wish. The events API is the endpoint to which our customers can send us events for our experimentation products. The endpoint to reach the events API is https://logx.optimizely.com/v1/events, which is also the endpoint our WEB snippet, FX and FS SDKs use for sending events.