Referrers, Redirects and Test&Target HTML Offers

The "redirect" offer in Adobe's Test&Target is a simple way to direct visitors to a new/different page should they meet the necessary targeting criteria for a test.  Unfortunately, redirect offers have at least two major flaws:

1. Original referrer information is not passed on to the new page.
2. Query string parameters that were passed to the original page are not passed on to the new page.
• EDIT:  While there is an option to pass parameters, I was having difficulties in making this work as expected. Since that time, however, I believe any issues with this feature have been fixed. I simply prefer to use custom HTML offers in my campaigns.

Fortunately, there are ways around these issues.  The method I've come to prefer requires the following:

• Abandon the use of redirect offers in favor of HTML offers.  The HTML offers will contain logic to store the original referrer (docment.referrer) in a temporary cookie before redirecting the visitor to the desired destination (window.location).  If you wish to pass along any query string parameters, be sure to include document.location.search in the redirect string.  For example:
• window.location="testPage.html"+document.location.search;
• Include a small block of code on the destination page(s) that reads the cookie created by the HTML offer, updates the referrer details for your analytics platform and then deletes/expires the temporary cookie.

The following example includes both the HTML offer and the logic for the destination page.  The destination page logic is specifically designed to be used with a SiteCatalyst s_code file.