What is a Pixel?

A Bloomreach Pixel is a piece of tracking code that you must add to your site/application’s pages to capture and send necessary tracking data to Bloomreach.

The Pixels track your users’ behavior with your online touchpoints - Navigation and Interactions.

• Navigation tracking usually captures page views on your website or screen changes on your mobile app.
• Interaction tracking captures the user's actions in those locations, such as clicks on buttons.

All of this serves as vital behavioral learning data for Bloomreach's algorithm. Over a period of time, data captured by the different pixels amounts to a powerful, intuitive search solution.

How do Pixels work?

The Bloomreach Pixels added to your site load along with the rest of your site’s code. When a customer visits your site, the pixels pick up activities as events and send them to Bloomreach.

Why are Pixels needed?

Pixels are an important part of your integration because of the following reasons:

• Bloomreach uses the information captured by the Pixels to learn about your site and your customers to dynamically optimize Bloomreach features such as personalizing user experience.
• It is the primary component to generate site analytics (Insights) that give you visibility into how customers use your site (and track conversions) so that you can make informed, strategic decisions to grow your business.

Which Bloomreach Pixels are needed?

By default, all Bloomreach integrations will need the Core Bloomreach Pixels. Additionally, there are different Bloomreach Pixels for optimizing different features. You will need different Pixels based on the Bloomreach solution that you are integrating.

Core Pixels

The Core Pixels for Bloomreach consist of the following types based on interactions:

• Page View Pixels for tracking user navigation, such as views on a Product Details page, Category listing page, Content page, Search results page, or Conversion page.
• Event Pixels for tracking user interactions such as Add-to-cart (ATC), Search, Suggest, and Quickview events.

Feature Pixels

Based on the features that you are integrating, you will need additional Pixels other than the Core Pixels.

The feature-specific pixels available are:

• Widget Pixels (Recommendations and Pathways Pixels)
• Relevance by Segment Pixels

The table below gives you a quick overview of the Pixels you will need for your integration based on the features:

How to add Bloomreach Pixels?

Pixel Location

The Pixels must be added to every page and every version of your site, including desktop, mobile, and tablet. A typical strategy includes simply adding the tracking code snippet to your global footer.

Bloomreach provides Pixel support for the following implementations:

• JavaScript Tracking Library (web, mobile web) to implement JS-based Bloomreach Pixels on your web pages or mobile web.
• Android and iOS Application Pixels (Discovery SDKs) to implement Bloomreach Pixels on your native app for mobile.
• API Implementation for any other environment. This is required for any device/platform where none of the above options can be used.

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Do not add Pixels to pages where sensitive details are passed

We recommend against integrating the Pixels on the pages on your site that collect sensitive information like registration or payment details.

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The Pixels are fully compliant with SSL when used on HTTPS pages. When your page does not use HTTPS by default, we recommend switching to HTTPS to ensure in-transit encryption.

JavaScript Environment

To integrate Bloomreach Pixels in a JavaScript environment, choose one of the following options:

• Add manually by installing the Pixels on your site
  The Bloomreach Pixel consists of 5 event tags for tracking Page Views, Add to Cart, Search, Suggest and Quick View actions. Learn more about Page View Pixels and Event Pixels Integration in their guides.
• Add using a Tag Manager
  If your website uses a tag manager such as GTM, Tealium or Ensighten, you can use your tag manager to easily place the Bloomreach Pixel on your website. Learn more.

Android and iOS Application (Discovery SDKs)

• To integrate Bloomreach Pixels in your Android Application, go through the steps in the Android Application Pixel Integration Guide.
• To integrate Bloomreach Pixels in your iOS Application, go through the steps in the iOS Application Pixel Integration Guide.

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For more information on integrating pixels on Native App, look out for "Native App (Non-JavaScript) Implementation" sections within each individual Pixel Integration page. This integration works differently than the web-based pixels.

Direct API Implementation

We also offer access to our Pixel APIs for calling them directly in environments where the Pixel code snippets are not compatible.

Request

To integrate Bloomreach Pixels directly via the API, you must generate HTTP GET requests to one of the following secure endpoints, depending on what region your account is provisioned in:

• https://p.brsrvr.com/pix.gif (for North America)
• https://p-eu.brsrvr.com/pix.gif (for Europe)

The analytics data for each request is encoded in the URL query string as parameter pairs, such as &type=pageview. Each parameter pair has a key and a value and must follow the requirements given below:

• Format should be in a key-value pair. For example: key=value
• Multiple pairs should be delimited by an ampersand (&). For example, key1=value1&key2=value2
• URL must be UTF-8 compatible
• The value must be percent-encoded
• Parameters must be appended to the end of the endpoint. For Example: https://p.brsrvr.com/pix.gif?acct_id=&type=pageview

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Pixel Reference

To get a quick overview of all the available Pixel parameters, go to the Pixel Reference page.

Response

If a correct HTTP request is received, we return a 200 status code. The Content-Type will be image/gif and the Content will be a 1x1 transparent gif image.

The HTTP response does not return an error code if the data was malformed, if the data in the payload was incorrect, or was not processed by Bloomreach. Consult with the Events Management tool to inspect incoming events and troubleshoot issues. If you do not get a 200 status code, you should not retry the request. Instead, verify your HTTP request to ensure that it does not contain any errors.

Implementation Summary

The steps to implement the Bloomreach Pixels are summed up below:

1. Add Bloomreach Core Pixels
2. Add Feature-specific Pixels (optional)
3. Verify Pixels (test pixel configurations)

Troubleshooting

We encourage you to utilize our tools that help you troubleshoot Pixel-related issues:

• Pixel Validator (Chrome extension)
• Events Management
• Pixel Monitor

For further help or feedback on the Bloomreach Pixel integrations, please contact your Bloomreach representative.