diff --git a/R/utils.R b/R/utils.R
index dec7b2ee..94820d6d 100644
--- a/R/utils.R
+++ b/R/utils.R
@@ -577,8 +577,9 @@ get_asset_url <- function(asset_path, prefix = "/") {
                               
 encode_plotly <- function(layout_objs) {
   if (is.list(layout_objs)) {
-    if ("x" %in% names(layout_objs) &&
-        "visdat" %in% names(layout_objs$x)) {
+    if ("plotly" %in% class(layout_objs) &&
+        "x" %in% names(layout_objs) &&
+        any(c("visdat", "data") %in% names(layout_objs$x))) {
       # check to determine whether the current element is an
       # object output from the plot_ly or ggplotly function;
       # if it is, we can safely assume that it contains no