Using Segmentation in VWO

One of the major mistakes companies makes when they start 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 meaningful, useful 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 some common needs and interests, allowing you to understand different groups' behavior. This helps in providing your website visitors with more relevant and targeted content. 

To know more about Segmentation in VWO, refer to this video.

Using the various segmentation options supported 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, etc
• Time

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 these:

• Pre segmentation: 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. When you target a visitor segment through a test, the visitors who qualify the segment's conditions are the only ones who can take part in 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: After a campaign has run and visitor data is collected, you can slice and dice the data to view how visitors from a specific traffic segment interacted with your website. 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.

Configuring Pre-segmentation in VWO

Using the pre-segmentation option in VWO, you can collect the data for your test from a particular visitor segment. For example, you may want to track visitor data on your website through Facebook or Google ads residing in a specific country or based on a cookie value.

Configuring Post-segmentation in VWO

To get a deeper insight into the data collected by your tests, you can slice and dice the test reports to view visitor traffic from a specific segment. Understanding how different visitor groups behave on the website allows you to analyze what works best for a segment and what does not.

For example, you can view traffic only from visitors coming from a particular device, say iPad.

For VWO Insights, you can view data for associated tests, goals, funnel drop-off, and other custom dimensions.

Saving Your Custom Segments in VWO

To avoid a repeat of the task, you can create and save your custom segments. This way, you can reuse them in other features of VWO again. All your saved segments appear under the MY SEGMENTS section.
Say you have created and saved a custom segment while setting up a funnel and the segment with similar conditions needs to be used for forms as well, then you can easily add it from the MY SEGMENTS sections without adding a new one from scratch.

Procedure

1. Go to All Visitors > CUSTOM section on the report page.
2. Create a segment by adding conditions for the visitor segment you want to target.
3. Click Save Segment.
   A dialog appears asking you to enter the name for your segments.
4. In the Save Segment as field, enter the name of your custom segment, and click SAVE.

Post-requisite
To verify if your custom segment is saved successfully, go to the MY SEGMENTS section and check for the one you recently saved.

Managing your Saved Segments in VWO

Once you have saved a custom segment in your VWO account, you have the option to edit, clone, and delete them based on your requirements. Let's have a look at how each option works.

• Editing a Saved Segment
  The Edit option enables you to modify the name and the targeting conditions of your saved segment. To edit a saved segment, click on the ellipses icon (⋮) corresponding to the one you want to modify and choose the Edit option.
  You can now make the desired changes and save them once done.
  
  
• Cloning a Saved Segment
  If you wish to duplicate any of your existing saved segments, clone it. With this option, you can create a new segment by making changes to an existing saved segment. 
  To clone a saved segment, click on the ellipses icon (⋮) corresponding to the one you want to clone and choose the Clone option.
  
  
• Deleting a Saved Segment
  If you wish to delete a saved segment that you no longer require, use the Delete option. To delete a saved segment, click on the ellipses icon (⋮) corresponding to the one you want to delete and choose the Delete option.