Personas

Users are designated a Persona when they visit a website. If the website does not use Personas, users view content normally.

If multiple Personas are available on the website, Optimizely {user["product-name"]} reviews the available Personas to determine if the user fits the criteria for any of them. Each user yields a "True" or "False" result based on the rules set for the Persona. The first Persona (in order of lowest sequence number) the user qualifies for is designated as that user's Persona for the session.

If a user does not fit into any defined Persona, they are designated the Default Persona. To ensure all users fit the Default Persona, assign the Default Persona the highest sequence number.

Why are Personas designated and not assigned? Personas are designated to users based on certain sets of criteria. These sets of criteria are dynamic and can change based on circumstance. So, a Persona is never permanently set or assigned to the user, simply "designated" for the length of the session.

Personas work well for region-specific products or sales, or with site and item promotions. For example, Hero Tools wants to create content banners for specific regions of the United States. They create a persona called "Minnesota" for users visiting the site from Minnesota, then create a content banner for the website featuring tools for clearing heavy snow. Based on the persona rules and contextual content, anyone accessing the site from Minnesota is assigned the "Minnesota" persona, and sees the Minnesota snow banner first.

A Persona's Sequence Number indicates when it is evaluated. The lower the number, the sooner the Persona has its rules checked to see if it is a match for the user. Insite recommends assigning very specific Personas lower sequence numbers, and more general Personas higher sequence numbers. This way, more general Personas won't register before specific ones.

In the image above, the St. Paul Persona attempts to resolve first, as it has the lowest sequence number. If the user does not fit the criteria for the St. Paul Persona, then the MN Persona attempts to resolve. If the user does not fit the criteria for that, it moves onto the Midwest Persona and attempt to resolve, and so on.