Define an audience with rules to target subsets of your website visitors with variations.
An audience is a subset of your website visitors (e.g., visitors in New York). You can use audiences to refine who is eligible to see variations by targeting or excluding visitors. Rules-based audiences let you target or exclude attributes (e.g., mobile device), behavior (e.g., viewed a webpage), company details (e.g., company name), or integration data (e.g., Salesforce lead).
You can also create code-based audiences to target visitors based on custom JavaScript you write.
How to create a rules-based audience
An Estimated Visitors count will show you how many visitors over the last 30 days match the criteria you choose.
Open your Optimize site in Webflow, then:
- Click Components in the Navigation panel
- Click the Audiences tab > New audience
- Enter a name (e.g., Mobile visitors)
- Choose a rule set (e.g., Device & Visitor)
- Choose the criteria (e.g., Device type)
- Choose a rule modifier (e.g., is, is not, contains, etc.)
- Choose a value (e.g., mobile phone), or enter a custom value (when allowed) and click Use [value]
- Optional: Click Add rule to include another attribute that the visitor must also match
- Optional: Click Add rule set to include visitors who match a different set of rules — not just the original
- Click Save
How to edit a rules-based audience
Editing an audience on a live optimization can change who sees its variations — which might affect your results. Double-check your updates to avoid any surprises.
Open your Optimize site in Webflow, then:
- Click Components in the Navigation panel
- Click the Audiences tab
- Choose an audience
- Click Edit audience
- Make your desired edits
- Click Save
How to use an audience in an optimization
Audiences define who can see an optimization's variations. You can set audiences at the optimization level for AI Optimize and Test optimizations, while Personalize optimizations require audiences at the variation level. Learn how to set an audience.
Default rule sets
These come ready to use in every Optimize account — no setup needed.
Device and visitor
Device type — this is the type of physical device the visitor is using to browse your site (e.g., mobile device, computer, etc.).
New/returning visitor — target visitors who are browsing your site for the first time or who have browsed your site before.
Visitor bucketing — Optimize randomly assigns each visitor a number from 1–100, letting you target specific groups of traffic. This is especially useful when you want the same set of visitors to see consistent messaging across different optimizations.
- Represents 1% of traffic — each number maps to roughly 1% of your visitors
- Target specific buckets — use a single value (e.g., equals 27) or a range (e.g., greater than 50)
- Bucket assignment is sticky — returning visitors keep their original number
Pro tip
Split visitors into separate bucket ranges to prevent overlap — e.g., use buckets 1–50 for a navbar experience and 51–100 for a CTA test, so each group sees only one experience.
Location and time
- Location — target by city, country/region, DMA (i.e., Designated Market Area), or state/province
- Time — target by time of day (e.g., Early AM), time zone (e.g., America/New York), or week part (weekday vs. weekend)
Source and campaign
- Traffic source — where the visitor was before landing on your site, based on the referrer URL
- Campaign info — target based on campaign UTM parameters Optimize detects in the referrer URL:
| UTM parameter | Display name |
|---|---|
| utm_source | Campaign Source |
| utm_medium | Campaign Medium |
| utm_campaign | Campaign Name |
| utm_term | Campaign Term |
| utm_content | Campaign Content |
Behavior
Optimize can detect certain actions visitors take (e.g., viewing a webpage) while viewing your website. You can target these actions to meet people where they are on their journey and deliver more personalized experiences.
For example, you can target visitors who view given webpages (e.g., a webpage about a conference) so that you can show personalized variations (e.g., conference-related messaging) on other pages.
Review the list of modifiers to understand how to define behaviors, like the page URL.
Important
Behavioral data isn't collected until Optimize is enabled. Once enabled, up to 180 days of data are retained.
Enhanced match (company details)
Enhanced match leverages reverse IP lookup to determine where a visitor might work, providing you details about that company. You can target by details such as industry, company name, domain, estimated revenue, and number of employees.
Learn more about the enhanced match feature.
Integration rule sets
You have the option to integrate with supported third-party services, enabling data to sync from that service into Optimize. A new rule set for the integrated service is automatically added to the available audience rules during the integration process.
6sense and Demandbase data
These integrations help deanonymize visitors by combining their data with Optimize’s enhanced match data to increase match rates. When a visitor is positively matched, they’ll see variations that target their associated data as soon as the page loads.
Good to know
6sense and Demandbase values won’t appear in audience rules until a matching visitor lands on your site. Once detected (e.g., Industry = Healthcare), the value becomes available to use when building audiences. If a value doesn’t appear yet, you can still enter it manually.
Salesforce, HubSpot, and Marketo data
These third-party services help you manage prospect data — and you can use that data in Optimize to deliver personalized variations. You control which data syncs with Optimize in the integration settings for each service.
Salesforce and HubSpot — Optimize attempts to match a visitor with your data before the first page loads. If a match is found, the visitor immediately sees variations targeting their data.
Marketo — Optimize relies on Marketo to identify visitors as known leads. Because of this, visitors typically need to view multiple pages before matching data is available and variations can be shown.
- Learn how to integrate Optimize with Marketo
- Learn how Marketo identifies visitors as known leads and when variations can load
Custom attributes
If you add URL parameters or add custom attributes to your Optimize settings, you can choose “Custom attributes” as a rule set and choose from any parameters or attributes you enabled for Optimize.
- URL parameters — tracking parameters you’ve appended to the URL that points to your website in marketing material
- Custom attributes — attributes you’ve set for visitors with a Webflow API that leverage your first-party or third-party data
About modifiers (e.g., is, is not, contains)
Modifiers define how the audience rule treats each attribute. For example, you could have an audience only include mobile devices with Android OS (i.e., OS is Android) or you could have the audience exclude Android OS (i.e., OS is not Android).
The list of modifiers are context-sensitive, so they'll change based on what you select. Below are common ones you might see:
| Modifier | Description |
|---|---|
| Is | The value matches the attribute exactly |
| Is not | The value is anything but the attribute |
| Contains |
The value has the attribute text within it. Example: "UTM Campaign
|
| Begins with |
The value starts with the attribute you set Example: "UTM Campaign
|
| End with |
The value ends with the attribute you set Example: "UTM Campaign
|
| Matches | You can use regex to define a pattern that the value must match to be considered a match. Learn more about regex: w3schools / regex101 |
| Exists |
Any value exists for this attribute Example: "UTM Campaign
|