Personalisation Rule matching later than expected

Question

Strange issue with Personalization rules and Pattern Cards. I have created a profile TestProfile with a single key TestKey (0..10).

There is a Profile card TestCard which allocates 10 to TestKey. A pattern card TestPattern matches the value of 1 (tried any value up to 10) for TestKey.

Now I have a page Test1 with TestPattern applied and I can see in “Explore Mode” that I collect the score for TestKey.

However, if I now visit a page Test2 with the below personalization rule (basically I show a rendering only of TestPattern is matched in the visit), the rule only seems to be triggered after at least three visits of page Test1 (the page with the profile card) on. This is despite the fact that I can see a sufficient score for TestKey after a single visit.

Even disabled all caching for a while but no joy :-(

Using Sitecore 9.1.1 and SXA 1.8.1

Any hints would be appreciated!

Answer 1

Sitecore Personalization by default requires 3 interactions before Sitecore maps the contact's accumulated score to a pattern card.

This is why only after 3 visits, you see your rendering changes. You may however, change this behavior by updating the following setting.

<!--  ANALYTICS PATTERNS MINIMAL PROFILE SCORE COUNT
      Specifies the minimum number of content items with profile values that must be requested before Sitecore
      maps the contact's accumulated score to a pattern card.
      Default: 3
-->
<setting name="Analytics.Patterns.MinimalProfileScoreCount" value="3" />

If you change the value to 1, on the first visit it will set the Pattern Card of the user and when refresh a second time, the rendering will be updated.