The starting point for PeakZebra segmentation is the question block. This block, like the name suggests, enables you to ask the current site visitor a question. A good question to start out with is one that asks them what would be most useful for them to takeaway from your site.
To ask this question, we place a pzQuestion block into a page on our site:
The “question” field is exactly what it sounds like. The “slug” you provide is the key you’ll use to reference this question later when making segmentation decisions. And finally you can add as many answers as you like:
When you save this and view it on the front end of the site, it presents the user with a simple radio button form:
When a user answers this question, PeakZebra holds on to the answer. If this user has submitted a form (with their name and email address, perhaps) in the past, then this answer will be associated with them.
If they haven’t submitted an answer before but submit one within the next month, this answer will be tied to the information they subsequently provide.
Further, if you have different questions posed using this block throughout your site, the answers that any given user provides will be stored together with their “person” record.
The field in the person table that stores this information is the qna field. It stores a JSON array representation of each slug and each answer. You can convert the field to an array in PHP using json_decode() or in JavaScript using JSON.parse(); Within PeakZebra, though, you’ll typically just input the slug and the answer you’d like to have present a specific piece of content. More on that in “Conditional Blocks.”
