If you have multiple websites, you might ask yourself whether you should create a different Dynamic Yield site for each one, or manage all of them in one Dynamic Yield site entity. This has tremendous impact on your work and how you view reports. There is no one correct answer for all cases, so use this article to help you decide what is best for you.
Guidelines
Do you have a single user base for both sites?
If a user can open an account on both sites, but it is a different account (for example, might use different passwords on each site), you should not unify the sites.
Is it the same team working on both of the Dynamic Yield sites?
In Dynamic Yield, the permissions are defined for each individual site. If you unify the sites, all editors of the unified sites can edit both domains. Separating them allows you to set one team as editors for site A and another team as editors for site B.
Do you use the same product catalog for both websites?
If the websites are basically similar, but for a different locale (say, one for EN and another for DE), you can add an attribute for each product, stating different properties for each locale (for example, different name, price, availability in stock). Locale is determined in the <head> of the account. Learn more about multilingual support.
Do you run the same campaigns across websites?
If most of the campaigns are similar, you might consider using one Dynamic Yield site. You can then target different websites when needed for each experience or campaign. When campaigns run across all websites, reports are also not broken down according to website. The same applies to the Audience Explorer.
Alternatively, you can keep sites separated, and when needed, copy templates, campaigns (for most of the campaign types), and evaluators. Some entities cannot be copied and must be manually recreated for each site (including multi-touch campaigns, Audiences, Goals, Units Email Campaigns).
Advantages of Site Aggregation:
- Larger userpool for quicker test results:
For example: Counteracts long experiment durations in countries with little traffic. - Larger datapool for smart algorithm logics:
For example: Reco Strategy Viewed Together is based on the user behavior of all user, combined. - Lower effort in maintenance of campaigns:
For example: Audiences, Strategies, and Campaigns do not have to be recreated in different sites, but rather, can be built once, while only using the Experience-level to tailor content to country specifics.
Disadvantages of Site Aggregation:
- Popularity scores are calculated across across all users on a site. As a result, local preferences might be overshadowed by the local preference of a larger domain.
For example: A trend of green pants in Spain, compared to a trend of red pants in Germany. Due to traffic share, red pants will be more highly represented in recommendation strategies based on popularity.
Summary
When possible, it is recommended to minimize the number of sites. Consider your workflow – is it just a technical different domain, but overall the same business? In that case, it is probably worth using a single or smaller number of Dynamic Yield sites. However, if your websites represent different "businesses" (for example, for different brands), with different teams, goals, campaigns, and user bases – you should probably create a different Dynamic Yield site for each one.