In this section you will learn:

How to install the digitalData data layer on your website.
How to correctly fill in all the variables inside the digitalData object.

digitalData is a global JavaScript object. It must be declared as high as possible in the source code of the site, before connecting the SegmentStream SDK. This object should be present on every page of the site.

Declare the window.digitalData object the first time the page loads. Do not try to build a system in which the object is created after an AJAX request. This decision will negatively affect your marketing infrastructure and make it unmanageable.

Page contents

Introduction

Let’s analyze the structure of the object in more detail. The object consists of other objects and arrays. All these objects and arrays must be filled with information in accordance with the standard described in this documentation.

In general, the digitalData object looks like this:

window.digitalData = {
  version: '1.1.2',
  website: {...},         //Global information about the website
  page: {...},            //Data about the current page
  user: {...},            //Data about the visitor or authorized user
  product: {...},         //Data about the product currenly viewed
  wishlist: {...},        //Data about the users wishlist
  cart: {...},            //State of the users cart
  transaction: {...},     //Data about the completed transaction
  listing: {...},         //List of products viewed on the page
  recommendation: [...],  //List of recommended products viewed on the page
  campaigns: [...],       //List of internal promotion campaigns
  changes: [...],         //Changes that occured in the digitalData after it's initialization
  events: [...]           //Events that fired on the current page
}

The detailed composition of each variable is discussed below.

How to fill the object

digitalData can be represented as a structured description of the page that the visitor sees on the screen of his monitor. The composition of the digitalData object depends on the content of the page. Here are some examples:

The user loaded a product page and sees detailed information about the product: image, name, price, brand, etc. All this information should be contained in the object digitalData.product
The user loaded the main page, sees a list of recommended products and several banners. Information about the recommended products should be contained in the array digitalData.recommendation, and information about the banners in the array digitalData.campaigns.
The basket icon with the number of items is visible on each page of the online store. This means that the object digitalData.cart must be filled on every page of the site.

Also, digitalData contains information about the user that is visiting the website. This information may or may not be displayed explicitly, but should be present in the object, for example: whether the user subscribed to the email newletter, whether the user made purchases earlier, the user’s name, etc.

As you can see from the examples above, some variables must be filled on each page, others - only on certain types of pages. If the content of the page changes without reloading the page - the content of the object digitalData also needs to be changed.

Next, we’ll look in more detail at the standard for filling each variable and examine examples of filling an object for all typical pages of an online store.

Detailed object descriptions:

More detailed description of the composition of digitalData for typical pages of an online store:

If your website is not an online store, you can still use the SegmentStream. We will help you prepare a data schema (the structure of the digitalData object) specifically for your project.

Events

digitalData.events is an array which contains event objects. Access to each event is carried out by the sequence number of its addition to the drawer, for example digitalData.events[2]. The event itself is an object that contains information about what happened. For example, when a page of a site is loaded, the Viewed Page event occurs. It is the very first event added to the array digitalData.events.
SegmentStream watches the array digitalData.events all the time. As soon as an event arrives in the array, SegmentStream enriches it with information from other object variables and sends it to connected marketing and analytics systems.

Changes in digitalData without page reload

digitalData.changes is an array that contains information about all the changes that occurred with variables in digitalData without a page reload. For example: items in the basket have changed, a filter of goods in the catalog has been applied, the user has changed the delivery method and others. All these changes must be made using the changes method.

Although it is physically possible, do not modify the digitalData object without using the digitalData.changes [] method

Learn more about dynamically changing digitalData

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