Using Segmentation in VWO

Purpose of Using Segmentation in VWO

One of the major mistakes companies make when starting A/B testing activities is sticking to a small, basic audience. This does not yield the most meaningful results, or sometimes, the results could be misleading. If you want to have significant and valuable outcomes, you need to have a segmentation strategy in place.

Segmentation typically means splitting your website visitors or app visitors into different groups and categories. This grouping is done based on common needs and interests, allowing you to understand different groups’ behavior, thereby providing your website visitors with more relevant and targeted content. 

Using the various segmentation options provided by VWO, you can slice and dice your website traffic to understand visitor behavior and get deeper insights into how they are using the website.

In VWO, you can define the segments on various conditions like:

• Visitor type
• The source from where the visitor landed on your website
• Device used
• Geographical location
• Time

Types of Segmentation in VWO

VWO supports two types of segmentation, one for data collection called “Pre-segmentation”, and another for interpreting reports called “Post-Segmentation”. Let’s delve more into each of these:

• Pre-segmentation: Using VWO's pre-segmentation options, you can collect the data for your test from a specific visitor segment, i.e., before running a VWO campaign, you can bucket your website visitors into different segments based on their source URL, device, location, time, behavior, and other conditions. For example, you might want to track data on your website through Facebook or Google ads for visitors residing in a specific country or based on a cookie value.
  When you target a visitor segment through a test, the visitors who meet the segment's conditions are eligible for the test. For example, you can create a segment for visitors who use Facebook on their iPhone device during XX – XX hours of the day.

• Post segmentation: Using VWO's post segmentation options, you can slice and dice your visitor’s data after a campaign has run to analyze how visitors from a specific traffic segment interacted with your website. Understanding how different visitor groups interact with your website allows you to determine what works best for a segment and what does not.
  For example, you can create a segment to view the reports of all the new visitors from Europe who clicked on the Products tab of your website using their iPad device.

Working with Segment Box in VWO

The Segment box of VWO is divided into three sections:

1. Standard Segments: This section allows you to target a particular group of visitors with your test or variations by selecting a segment from the predefined segments. In addition, it allows you to slice and dice your campaign reports for different visitor segments of your website.  After a thorough analysis of the most commonly used conversion tracking scenarios and use-cases, we have created the Standard Segments. When you choose a segment from the Standard Segments section, a summary of the segment's configurations appears on the right.
   
   
2. My Segments: You can access your saved segments in this section. Using this section, you can quickly access and reuse the segments in your tests without creating them from scratch. When you select a segment here, its definition appears on the right, providing an overview of how the segment is configured. In addition, you can Edit, Clone, or Delete your saved segment. To learn how you can do this, refer to What are Saved Segments in VWO?.
   
   
3. Custom Segment: This section allows you to segment your visitors based on custom conditions, such as the browser or device used to access your website. You can use various properties to create a custom segment. When you click on the first dropdown in the Custom Segments section, a list of properties is displayed; you can either search for the one you need or scan through the list of options. Alternatively, you can use the Category and Source filters to narrow down your search. Furthermore, if you wish to reuse your segment conditions in the future, you can save them using the SAVE SEGMENT option.
   
   INFO: To add multiple conditions, click Add another condition. Also, you can define the logical relationship between the different conditions using the AND/OR operators to organize the segment condition. 
   To learn how you can save your segment, refer to What are Saved Segments in VWO?