Using URL Patterns in VWO

To track goal conversions for your test, you need to specify the URLs of the pages where you want to record the conversion. You can enter specific URLs, page patterns, or regular expressions (regex) of the pages where you want to record goal conversion. To learn more, refer to this video.

For example, if the goal of your test is to check how many users access a particular page of your website, define the goal type as track page visits on and enter the URL of the page that the users need to visit, to record the conversion.

VWO supports the following patterns to specify the URLs for the page(s) you want to test:

URL matches

If you wish to match the exact URL of the webpage where you want to record goal conversions, choose the URL matches option. Use this option to set up a test on a single URL and it searches for a character-to-character match of the URL you enter.

For example, say you want to record a goal conversion on the URL http://www.example-site.com/checkout.html. The goal will get triggered only if the visitor lands on this specific page. However, if the user had entered the goal URL as http://www.example-site.com/checkout.html/?id=1234, then also the goal will get triggered as query parameters are matched by default.

URL matches pattern

If you wish to record the goal conversion on more than one page of your website, choose the URL matches pattern option. For this URL type, define a URL pattern by substituting variable parts of the URL with the wildcard * (an asterisk).

For example, you can use the pattern http://www.example.com/products* to record goal conversion on all product pages of your website. Likewise, you can use the pattern http://www.example.com* to track conversions on the entire website.

NOTE: For dynamic URLs, there can be instances when the URL of a page 
differs from visitor to visitor. For example, say the ‘thank you’ page on 
your website has a URL like www.example.com/thankyou/1123/summary or 
www.example.com/thankyou/4567/summary. For dynamic URLs, the numeric part 
in the URL can differ from user to user. In such cases, you can use the 
asterisk value www.example.com/thankyou/*/summary to track conversions on 
all the URLs that match the pattern.

URL contains

This URL type looks for any string or substring match in the goal page URL. If you select URL contains as the URL match type, the test page must contain the string of the substring you specified.

For example, if you specify the URL contains type as http://www.example.com/blog, VWO will track conversions for the URLs http://www.example.com/blog/January, http://www.example.com/blog/February, and so on.

URL starts with

The URL starts with option lets you match all those strings that match the beginning of your goal page URL. The URL you type here must match the characters at the beginning of your goal page URL.

For example, say you want to record goal conversion on the URL http://www.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=1234567. In this case, the id varies for every other user. You can match this page by using http://www.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1 as the goal URL and then selecting URL Starts with option. Here, VWO will track conversion on all pages starting with http://www.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1, regardless of the user ID at the end of the URL.

URL ends with

The URL ends with option that lets you match all those strings that match the ending of your goal page URL. The string you enter here must match the characters at the end of your test page URL.

NOTE: In case there are certain query parameters in the URL, they will not 
be considered in the URL Ends with case.

For example, say you want to record goal conversion on the checkout page of your shopping cart that ends with /checkout.html. Your visitors may be landing on the checkout page from various sources. In such a scenario, you can specify the URL as /checkout.html and then select URL Ends with as the URL type. Here, VWO records conversion on all pages that end with /checkout.html.

URL matches regex

The URL matches regex option allows you to use wildcards and special characters to match the URL of your website under test. Using Regular Expressions (Regex), you can specify a set of pages on which the test should run.

Say you want to run the test on the checkout page checkout.cgi\?page=1 and want to match with http://shoes.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&id=002 and http://trousers.example.com/checkout.cgi?page=1&language=fr&id=119, choose the In such URL matches regex option to define the constant element of the URL.