The Scope determines what information is collected in the custom dimension. In VWO, you can either collect information about your website visitors (USER) or about a particular session of a visitor (SESSION).
User Scope
User scope stores information about website visitors that is not automatically tracked in VWO such as gender, native language, favorite sports, plan type, signup date, age, or email address. When you create custom dimensions with the scope as User, VWO associates the tag with the current and all future sessions of that visitor.
You can select User Scope for all tests, Insights, and personalization campaigns. The following are some use cases:
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Tag visitors with their plan type and analyze funnel performance of users who are on ‘lite’ against the Pro plan.
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Track gender information, and then view heatmaps/session recordings only for female visitors.
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Tag all visitors who downloaded the e-book from your website, and then compare the conversion performance of visitors who downloaded the book versus those who did not.
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View recordings of users who encountered a locked feature. Now, the data can be used to track how many visitors upgraded their plan to purchase the locked feature.
Session Scope
Session scope stores information about each session that is not automatically tracked in VWO, such as signed-in visitors for a session, total purchases made during a single session, and so on. Session-level dimensions are tagged separately for every session of the visitor. The Session scope is supported only for Goals, Funnels, Heatmaps, and Recordings. You cannot use session dimensions to filter Test and Personalization campaigns.
The following are some use cases for session-level custom dimensions:
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Compare the conversion rate for the Add to Cart button goal for signed-in vs. guest users, or viewing heatmaps for only signed-in users.
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View differences in the behavior of visitors who are spending a particular amount of time.
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Create a dimension whose value is set to “true” if a visitor clicks a specific promotional banner in a session. Analyze visitor behavior by viewing session recordings where users clicked on the promotional banner.