Using Standard Segments in VWO, you can select predefined segments and target a specific group of visitors through your test or variations.

With the VWO segmentation feature, you can group your website visitors into segments based on the visitors' common traits. For example, you can segment users based on the device they use to access the website, the referral site that directs them to your page, their geographical location, and so on.

Classification of Standard Segments

The Standard Segments are majorly divided into the following categories:

Traffic Source

This section lists the different kinds of sources from which visitors arrive at your website. This includes the following options:

• • Direct Traffic: Direct traffic comprises visitors who land directly on the campaign page by either typing the page’s URL in their browser or reaching via browser bookmarks. For this case, document.referrer is empty in visitor information.
    
    
  • Referral Traffic: It comprises the visitors who land on the test page through referral websites. In this case, document.referrer has a value.
    
    
  • Social Traffic: It comprises the visitors who come from social media platforms like Facebook, Quora, Reddit, Imgur, Disqus, 9gag, Tumblr, Google Plus, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Linkedin, Technorati, Digg, Hootsuite, Myspace, Tinyurl, Youtube, Flickr, Pinterest, and so on.
    
    
  • Non-paid Search Traffic: This is also known as organic traffic, which refers to those visitors that arrive at your website from unpaid search results. Here, the URL does not contain utm_medium query parameters with values as cpc, ppc, cpa, cpm, cpv, and cpp.
    
    
  • Paid Search Traffic: This is also known as inorganic traffic, which refers to those visitors that arrive at your website from any paid online source, such as ad promotions on Google. VWO classifies the traffic as paid if the URL using which the traffic arrives at your website contains utm_medium query parameters such as cpc, ppc, cpa, cpm,  cpv, cpp.
    
    
  • Search Traffic: This refers to those visitors that arrive at your website from search results via search engines. This includes both paid and non-paid search traffic.
    
    
  • Email Traffic: This refers to the visitors that arrive at your website from email promotions. VWO classifies the traffic as email traffic if the URL using which the traffic arrives at your website contains utm_medium=email as the query parameter.

VWO prioritizes traffic sources and applies segmentation logic accordingly. It classifies incoming traffic using a fixed priority order:

1. Social
2. Paid using the gclid query string parameter
3. Email
4. Paid using the UTM query string parameter
5. Organic
6. Referral
7. Direct

Traffic is attributed to the highest-ranking applicable source based on VWO’s attribution hierarchy. For example, if a user arrives through a source that qualifies for multiple segments, VWO will assign the traffic to the one with higher priority. This means that even if a visitor meets conditions for two different sources, only the higher-priority source will be considered, and the lower one will be excluded, even if it's explicitly used in the segment.

For more information on how to set up campaigns with multiple traffic sources or a combination of two or more traffic sources, see Configure Campaigns for Multiple Traffic Sources.

Device Type

This section lists the different kinds of devices the visitors use to access your website. They are classified based on their user agent strings and include the following options:

• • Mobile and Tablet Traffic: Refers to the visitors that arrive at your website via mobile or tablet.
    
    
  • Mobile Traffic: Refers to the visitors that arrive at your website via mobile.
    
    
  • Desktop Traffic: Refers to the visitors that arrive at your website via desktop.
    
    
  • Tablet Traffic: Refers to the visitors that arrive at your website via tablet.
    
    
  • Desktop and Tablet Traffic: Refers to the visitors that arrive at your website via desktop or tablet.

Visitor Type

This section lists the different types of visitors based on their visit. It includes the following options:

• New Visitors: Refers to the visitors who arrive at your website for the first time after VWO code installation. This means if it is the visitor’s first session on your website, they are considered a new visitor.
  
  
• Returning Visitors: Refers to the visitors who arrive at your website from the same browser for another session.
  

Operating System

This section lists the different operating systems of the devices using which the visitors arrive at your website. It includes the following options:

• Windows: Refers to the visitors that use a Windows operating system on their device to access your website.
  
  
• MacOS: Refers to the visitors that use a Mac operating system on their device to access your website.
  
  
• Linux: Refers to the visitors that use a Linux operating system on their device to access your website.

You can even search for a Standard Segment using the search box at the top of the list. Here, as you type in, the list populates the relevant segment templates for you to choose from.