Several factors can affect the way that Monetate processes data for an experience. Typically, these fall into two different categories: WHO target qualifications and action conditions.
Qualifying for WHO Targets
Visitors on your site who aren't in a Stealth Group are bucketed into the experiences for which they qualify. Stealth visitors are forced into the experiment or control and don't count towards data in the experience results.
For experiences that include testing, visitors remain in their experience subsegment for the life of their Monetate cookie. If a visitor clears their cookies, then they're reevaluated for the experiment.
Qualifying for Action Conditions
For site visitors to qualify for experience results, they must meet or qualify for at least one of the action conditions within an action. If a particular experience has no action conditions, this evaluation step is bypassed.
For example, if variant A in an experience doesn't have any action conditions and, as a result, targets to all pages, but variant B includes an action condition that only targets cart pages, a visitor isn't counted in the experience results until an action fires.
The resulting bounce rate for variant A is higher because it saw all the experience traffic, but traffic in variant B is bounced at a lower rate because fewer visitors were counted in the experience results. Ultimately, this test is invalid because the results are artificially skewed because the sample size is different for each.
Ensuring Valid Tests
To ensure test validity, visitors must see an action on the same pages in all variants. One way to accomplish this goal is to add a Data Collect or Do Nothing action that has the same action conditions as the other variant in the experience.
Submit a request using the Monetate Technical Support portal (support.monetate.com) if you don't have a Data Collect or Do Nothing action available on the Action Type panel when configuring an experience's WHAT settings in your account.