CMS for administrators > Visitor groups

Episerver CMS iconVisitor groups

This topic is intended for administrators and developers with administration access rights in Episerver.

Personalization in Episerver lets you target website content to selected visitor groupSite visitors with something in common, such as age, geographic location, and so on. Used in the personalization feature of Episerver CMS. (See Personalizing Content.)s. The personalization feature is based on customized visitor groups that you create based on a set of personalization criteria. Episerver provides a set of basic criteria such as geographic location, number of visits, and referring search phraseOne or more words that a user enters into a search box to begin a search.. You can also develop customized criteria.

Built-in visitor group criteria

The Episerver platform comes with the following built-in visitor group criteria.

Visitor group criteria Description
Site Criteria
  • Number of Visits. Matches the number of times the visitor has visited the website. You can specify Less than, Equal, or More than, within a number of days (weeks, months or years), or since a date, or in total. For example, Less than 1 [visit] within 10 days.
  • User Profile. Matches a value stored in a user’s profile. You can specify Last Name, First name, Company, Address, Title, or email address. Each item can be equal to, contained in, start with or end with the specified value. For example, Company Equals ExampleCo. See example.
  • Visited Category. Select one of the website's page categories. You can also select a number of pages which use that category that have been visited. The visitor must have visited the specified number of pages to which the category is applied. For example, Category X viewed at least 3 pages out of a total of 6.
  • Visited Page. Select one site page. The visitor must have visited that page during the current session.
Time and Place Criteria
  • Geographic Coordinate. Uses the visitor’s approximate location in a geolocation database (based on visitor IP address). Drag the marker to the map (Google maps), and select a radius around that point to indicate the visitor's proximity to the location. See example.
  • Geographic Location. Matches the visitor to a specific continent, country, and region. For example, Continent: Europe, Country: Norway, Region: Oslo. You also can specify a wild card for country and region. For example, Country N* in Europe yields Netherlands and Norway. See example.
  • Time of Day. Matches the visitor's time period with the start time, end time (15-minute intervals), and days you specify. For example, From 2:00 PM to 4:15 PM on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday.
URL Criteria
  • Landing URL. Matches the URL with which the visitor enters the site. You can decide if the landing URL is equal, starts with, or ends with the with a specified value. For example, contains www.example to match www.example.com, www.exampleURL.com and so on.
  • Referrer. Matches the Host name or URL of the referred page that was clicked before entering the site, such as a search engine result page. You can decide if the referrer criteria should match on equal, contain, start with, or end with a specified value for the whole or parts of the Host name or URL. See example.
  • Search Keyword. Stores the URL of the referred page that was clicked before entering the site, such as the URL of a search engine result page. Your partner developer can define this criteria to specify the search word to match against the URL by a regular expression. The regular expression finds search words in the URL. Note: This criterion is not compatible with Google due to privacy restrictions for Google searches.
Visitor Groups. Visitor Group Membership. Select members from existing visitor groups. For example, Member of Job Applicants, or Not a Member of Start Customer Club.
Episerver Forms
  • Submitted Form. Matches when a visitor submits (or does not submit) a particular form that you select from a drop-down menu. For example, Has Submitted Job Application. See example.
  • Submitted Form Value. Matches when a visitor submit a particular form value. See example.

Managing visitor groups

Visitor groups are managed from the Visitor Group option in the global menu. When creating a new visitor group, you select one or more criteria and define appropriate settings. Those criteria are used to determine whether a user visiting the website is a part of that visitor group.

You can make the editor a member of VisitorGroupAdmins. This group provides access only to the Visitor Groups option in the global menu.

ClosedCreating a visitor group
  1. From the global menu, select CMS > Visitor Groups.
  2. Click Create.
    Closed—Image: Create visitor group—

    Episerver image

  3. In the Criteria section, click to add criteria for the visitor group as follows:
    1. In the Match drop-down list, select the criteria to match All, Any or Point. What you select here affects all criteria for the visitor group. Using points is a way to set a value for what a desired action on the website is worth.
    2. Drag the criteria from the pane on the right and drop it into the Drop new criterion here area.
  4. Make the settings for the criteria, see examples described in Examples of creating visitor groups.
  5. In Name, name the visitor group you are creating. This name is displayed in the personalized content box when you select the content on a page.
  6. In Notes, type a descriptive text about the visitor group you have created, for example, its purpose. This description is displayed as a tooltip when the editor is adding a visitor group to the content on a page.
  7. In Security Role, select the check box if you want this visitor group to be available when setting access rights for pages and files in admin view. Note that visitor groups only have read access.
  8. In Statistics, keep the check box selected to enable statistics for the visitor group (this check box is selected by default).
  9. Click Save.
ClosedEditing a visitor group

  1. From the global menu, select CMS > Visitor Groups.

    Closed—Image: Visitor groups—

    Episerver image

  2. Click Edit for the visitor group you want to change.
  3. Add a new criterion for the visitor group by drag-and-drop, change the value for an existing criterion, or click Episerver image to delete an existing criterion.
  4. Click Save.

If you change the name of a visitor group available in the list for access rights, the settings for this visitor group no longer work.

ClosedCopying a visitor group
  1. From the global menu, select CMS > Visitor Groups.
  2. Click Copy for the visitor group you want to copy. The new copy has the same name as the original but with the extension “- Copy”.
  3. Rename and change criteria for the new visitor group you have copied.
ClosedDeleting a visitor group
  1. From the global menu, select CMS > Visitor Groups.
  2. Click Delete for the visitor group you want to delete.
  3. Confirm the deletion.
ClosedViewing and clearing statistics

The visitor group statistics appear as a gadget on the dashboard. Clear the statistics from the database as follows:

  1. From the global menu, select CMS > Visitor Groups.
  2. Click Clear statistics Episerver image.
  3. Confirm the deletion.

The Clear statistics button permanently deletes statistics from the database. This action cannot be undone.

Examples of creating visitor groups

ClosedEXAMPLE: Site criteria and points

By using Points, you can set a value for how much an action is worth, for example, a visited campaign page. In this example, a visitor who visits the page on a certain date matches the visitor group criteria.

Closed—Image: Edit visitor group—

Episerver image

  1. In the Match drop-down list, select the criteria to match Point.
  2. Drag and drop the Visited Page criterion, and select page. Use drag-and-drop of the criteria again to add several pages.
  3. Drag and drop the Number of Visits criterion, and select More than > 1 > Since [date]. (To create a visitor group for visitors who have never visited the page, select Less than > 1 > Since [date].)

    Episerver image

  4. Enter the number of points each criterion is worth, and select whether or not the criterion is required.
  5. Select Threshold for the criteria you added in your visitor group. For example, the visitor must fulfill 1 of 3 criteria to be included in the visitor group.
  6. Click Save.
ClosedEXAMPLE: Geographic location

You can direct content to visitors from a specific country and specific days. For example, people from Sweden visiting your website on weekdays. You can show these visitors a clickable banner to sign up for a conference.

  1. Drag and drop the Geographic Location criteria, and select Continent, Country and/or Region. Use drag-and-drop of the criteria again to add several countries.

    Episerver image

  2. Drag and drop the Time of Day criteria, and select [weekday]. You can also select the personalization to start and end at a specific time.
  3. Click Save.
ClosedEXAMPLE: Geographic coordinate

You can direct your content to visitors from a specific part of a city, for example, “People from Upplandsgatan, Stockholm”.

  1. Drag and drop the Geographic Coordinate criteria, and click Select Location.
  2. Click Select location to display a map that you click to set a location. You can zoom in the map for more precise locations.
  3. Select the Radius [number of kilometers or miles].

    Episerver image

  4. Click Save.
ClosedEXAMPLE: Referrer

The HTTP Referrer is based on pages, such as those used in a campaign. For example, you can target content to visitors who

  • search for “episerver and cms” on Google.com
  • from the search result page, click the Episerver landing page link
  1. Drag and drop the Referrer criteria, and select URL > Equals > the URL of the search engine result page, for example, http://www.google.se/#hl=sv&source=hp&biw=1338&bih=790&q=episerver+cms.

    Episerver image

  2. You also can add the Geographic Location to select a country.
  3. Click Save.
ClosedEXAMPLE: Form and form values

You can base a visitor group on whether the visitor has (or has not) submitted a particular form or form value. For example, you can target content to visitors who submit a Job Application form:

Episerver image

You can target content to visitors that give you a low rating on a Satisfaction Survey.

Episerver image

Additional visitor group criteria

You can extend the built-in visitor group criteria as follows:

Episerver imageEpiserver Commerce criteria

Visitor group criteria specific for e-commerce, such as customer properties, markets, and order frequency criteria. See Personalization for Commerce.

Episerver Add-on iconEpiserver Visitor Group Criteria Pack

  • Display Channel matches the visitor’s current display channel when visiting the website, such as distinguishing between web and mobile visitors.
  • IP Range matches the IP range either equal to, below, or above a defined IP number the visitor used when visiting the website.
  • OS & Browser matches the operating system and browser the visitor used when visiting the website.
  • Role matches the access roles the visitor had when visiting the website. You can either include roles by using the In role condition, or exclude roles by Not in role.

Episerver Add-on iconEpiserver Marketing Automation

Visitor group criteria specifically designed for marketing automation.

back to top Episerver image



Episerver User Guide 16-9 | Released: 2016-12-15 | © Episerver 2016 | Send feedback to us