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Troubleshooting Dialogues

How to troubleshoot personalization in BlueConic via DialoguesCan't seem to get your dialogue to work properly? Here are some tips and tricks to help you figure out what might be going wrong with BlueConic Dialogues on your site.

What to check if your dialogue isn't working

First make sure that the BlueConic dialogue is actually eligible for execution on your page by opening the BlueConic Simulator and checking the Dialogues widget.

Testing dialogues in the Simulator; How to tell if a content dialogue is turned on or off in the BlueConic CDP by testing dialogues

This box shows all dialogues for the page shown in the Simulator grouped by position. The name of your dialogue or variant should be visible here.

If your dialogue is not listed in the Dialogues widget in the BlueConic Simulator:

  • Hover over the position where you would expect your dialogue to appear. See if one of the dialogues lights up in the Dialogues widget. Click on the "+" icon to see all dialogues for that position.
  • Is the dialogue configured for the right channel(s) on the Where tab?
  • Are there any URL restrictions? If so, make sure they are properly configured.

You want to test your dialogue outside of the BlueConic Simulator

It can be useful to test your dialogue outside of the simulator, live on your test site. To test a dialogue on your site without showing your website visitors the dialogue, you can:

  • Restrict your dialogue to a “test” page, for example www.blueconic.com?mytest=true. This will ensure your dialogue only shows up on a URL that you’re testing with but that visitors do not access.
  • Restrict your dialogue’s WHO-tab to a segment of only your profile. You can do this by using any profile property that contains a value that will point only to you, for example your email address.

Your Consent popup window is blocking your dialogue in the What tab

Cookies without the SameSite=None and Secure attributes are no longer correctly set within iFrames. BlueConic uses iFrames for the What tab and the Simulator to load your website. This can result in your Consent popup window remaining on the webpage, even after cookies are accepted, making it difficult to edit your dialogues. In those cases, you can edit your dialogue outside of the website’s context. You can do this by clicking the URL bar in your dialogue and pressing the following keys on your keyboard: Alt + W (or Option + W on Mac). This opens a new editor that allows you to edit your dialogue outside of the website’s context.

Check whether your dialogue is listed in the Dialogues widget

If a dialogue is listed in the BlueConic Simulator with a red switch next to its name, then the dialogue is not active. This may be intentional, in which case you can toggle the switch in the Simulator to make it act as if the dialogue were active. If the dialogue was supposed to be active:

  • Check if there are any restrictions on Start/End Date, Targets, or Frequency Caps under 'Advanced Settings' for the dialogue.

    How to use the Dialogues widget to administer Dialogues in the BlueConic customer data platform (CDP); testing dialogues in the Simulator
  • Is the Dialogue targeted at a specific segment of profiles? Check the dialogue's Who tab. If so, make sure you are also part of that segment. The Simulator offers a configurable list of segments which you are part of.
  • Check the Optimization tab of your dialogue, specifically the distribution percentage of the original in the top row. Is there a chance that you randomly have been picked to be part of the control group? If so, try changing that percentage to 0 to eliminate the chance completely.

You can also click on the name of the dialogue in the Dialogues widget. This will show some information about it, plus a plain text explanation of the situation for the dialogue:

Troubleshooting 2 Dialogues in BlueConic Simulator.png

  • Is the name of the dialogue in bold font? No? Perhaps there are other Dialogues configured at the same position. BlueConic will round-robin dialogues which share the same position. You can force the Simulator to show a specific Dialogue by clicking the "eye" icon in front of the name.
  • Is the position of the dialogue actually available on the page? Check the 'Position' column.
    in the Simulator. If the position is displayed in cursive font, then the position is not available.
  • Are there any JavaScript errors in the browser's console? If so, contact BlueConic Support.

Learn more about using the Simulator.

Tips if your dialogue is not showing when a user enters a segment

BlueConic segments form the audience for your BlueConic Dialogues. Profiles enter and exit segments in real time as they fit (or cease to fit) the Segment definitions. However, because BlueConic retrieves a profile's segment memberships at the beginning of each page view, newly created segments are not available until the visitor refreshes the page or navigates to another page. To account for this scenario, you can define the dialogue's audience directly in the Dialogue Who tab rather than calling on a segment to define the audience.

Tips if your dialogue doesn't appear in the BlueConic editor/What tab

If your dialogue is not appearing in the dialogue What tab but you are not seeing any errors, check to confirm the URL you’re viewing qualifies to view the Dialogue according to the dialogue’s Where rules. Also, if the dialogue is assigned a position, please ensure that the position is available on that page.

In addition, while regular expressions (regex) can be used for dialogue Where rules, please note that they cannot be used in the What tab. For example, “$” can be used at the end of a URL when defining Where rules to require an exact match at the end, but the dialogue editor does not accept this regular expression.

Tips if your dialogue is taking forever to load

One possible cause is your browser refusing to download insecure content into a secure environment. The browser silently warns about this by placing an indication in the browser window. The warning is easy to overlook.

The shield icon is located in the top right of the address bar in Chrome:

Testing dialogues in the BlueConic simulator and Chrome browser

The shield icon is located to the left of the address bar in Firefox:

Testing dialogues in the BlueConic Simulator and Firefox browser

In each case: click the icon or button and allow the content of the dialogue to be loaded.

Note: Dialogues are served by BlueConic from a secure server, so the dialogue is not causing the warning. However your dialogue might reference insecure content (e.g. a lightbox based on an HTTP URL).

If you notice that you need to disable the warning to be able to see your dialogue, it is best to see if you can avoid it in the first place (e.g. base the lightbox on an HTTPS URL).

See also: Browser warning when loading http pages in BlueConic

Tips if no conversions are being attributed to your Dialogue

By default, conversions are recorded only after a click is registered. This means Conversion events can only be attributed to a BlueConic Dialogue after a Click event has been attributed to that dialogue.

The exception is if you choose to allow view-through conversions (on the Why tab of the Dialogue window), where a conversion is recorded after only a view has been registered.

Other points to know about registering conversions in BlueConic:

  • Remember to set up your conversion rules before your dialogue goes live. If you add a conversion rule to the "Why" section after a dialogue has finished running, none of the conversions will be retroactively attributed. The conversion rule will only start tracking conversions from the point it is created onward.
  • Make sure you select a channel for the dialogue on the Where tab. Only dialogues with a channel will be attributed events.
  • Check the Why tab to make sure the ‘Allow conversions with no click’ box is checked. If the conversion moment happens (but no click) and you don’t have the ‘Allow conversions with no click’ box checked, the conversion won't be tracked. 
  • See the section "Choosing a conversion moment" for tracking conversions on the Why tab for notes and caveats about setting up conversion moments in the Dialogue Why tab.
  • Make sure you use correct syntax when specifying the Conversion URL for a dialogue. See Specifying URLs in BlueConic for information.
  • If two or more dialogues share the same Conversion URL (or have matching URL specifications) then only the dialogue to which a Click event was last attributed will be attributed the Conversion event.
  • If there are multiple conversion moments set up for one dialogue, this can affect the number of direct conversions counted.  For example, you might be counting two conversions for the same profile.

  • For 'Content' and 'Lightbox' dialogues, Click events will only be attributed if the URL of the link is a 'Shortened URL' created with the link icon in the editor.
    How to test content dialogues in the BlueConic Simulator

Learn more about dialogue conversions in the Why section. For details on tracking direct conversions and indirect conversions in BlueConic, see Metrics for views, clicks, and conversions.

Tips if there are duplicate content recommendations in your dialogue

Duplicate content recommendations are caused when the articles collected for recommendation do not have a unique identifier. The content collector needs a unique ID for the articles or items being collected. If you add an identifier to your article metadata, you should use this unique identifier in the content collector.

Tips for setting up a dialogue's audience

You specify a dialogue's audience in the Who tab. In the rule you create for the dialogue's audience, if you set the audience rule to specify a certain profile property 'does not contain' a selected value, if the associated profile property is empty that profile meets the requirement for that rule. This is because the empty value does not contain a matching value for that profile property.

Dialogues Who Tab.png

Contacting Support

For information on contacting our Support Team with questions, see Contacting BlueConic Support.

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