- This feature is currently in Early Access. It will be rolled out gradually for all accounts in the upcoming weeks.
- Once it is rolled out completely, Metric Reports will replace Goals across all accounts.
This article covers the following: |
Metric Reports in VWO Insights provide a powerful way to track and analyze critical business metrics. You can track standard events like page views and clicks, custom events defined in Data360, and calculated metrics such as revenue.
Additionally, you can integrate metric reports with other VWO features such as funnels, session recordings, and heatmaps to gather deeper behavioral insights. They help you monitor business trends, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your website’s performance. Thus, offering a more flexible and comprehensive alternative to traditional goals.
For example, an e-commerce store notices that users with high-value carts are abandoning their purchases before checkout. Using metric reports, the company tracks standard events such as page views, add-to-cart actions, and purchase completions. After tracking conversion rates for different segments, such as traffic sources or user demographics, they identify trends that impact high-value cart retention. With the help of metric reports and the associated heatmap, session recording, and funnel insights, they monitor the test’s performance and identify the friction points causing drop-offs. Based on the analysis, the store optimizes the checkout flow, reducing the abandonment rate and maximizing revenue from high-value transactions.
The key benefits of this feature include:
- Comprehensive tracking: Track trends for standard or custom metrics relevant to your business.
- Flexible reporting: Analyze data across segments and date ranges.
- Actionable insights: Identify trends and anomalies to take informed optimization efforts.
- Seamless integration: Connect with other VWO features like Heatmaps, Session Recordings, and Funnels.
Set up Metric Reports
You can set up a metric report from two locations in the VWO app:
Set up metric reports from Data360
This is a one-click setup.
- Go to Data360 > Metrics.
- From the list of available metrics, select the metric you want to track and click Create Metric Report.
NOTE: This action also enables metric attribution tracking in Zonalmap.
A success message appears on the screen once the metric report is created successfully. For more information on the metrics you can track using Metric Reports, see Working with Metrics in VWO. - Click View Report to access the report and get detailed insights and analytics. Alternatively, you can access the report from Insights.
For more information on how to interpret and analyze the data in a metric report, see Interpret Metric Reports.
Set up metric reports from Insights
- Go to Insights > Metric Reports > Create.
- From the New Metric Report page, you can create a metric report for an existing metric or create a new metric to track.
To create a report for a predefined metric, select it from the available list, and click Start Tracking.
NOTE: You cannot select predefined metrics currently in use within an existing report for new report creation.To create a report for a new metric, click Create new metric, configure the metric, and click Start Tracking.
The new metric report is created.
INFO: See Interpret Metric Reports to understand how to analyze the report data. Use the insights from the report to monitor business trends, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to optimize your website’s performance. You can also integrate the report with other VWO features to gather deep behavioral analysis for making data-driven decisions.
Access Metric Reports
To access a metric report:
- Go to Insights > Metrics Reports.
- From the Metric Reports dashboard, click the metric to view its detailed report.
Interpret Metric Reports
A metric report in VWO Insights provides detailed visitor data for the metric being tracked on your website. For example, a report for the metric TotalItemsInCart shows how many items a user adds to their cart during a session. It helps track the user’s shopping behavior by capturing actions like adding or removing items, product page views, and completing a purchase. VWO allows you to analyze these reports by applying filters for specific date ranges, visitor segments, and overall metric performance. This article further explains how to interpret a metric report.
A metric report is divided into three sections:
Filters
Using filters, you can customize the report by applying specific criteria such as dates, segments, and additional metric-related parameters. Applying a filter updates the metric overview chart to reflect the filtered data.
Choose from the following filters:
-
Filter by Date
Click the Date Filter and select a date range to view the corresponding data. By default, the report displays data for the last 30 days. Choose from the following options to filter the data:- Last 30 Days: Data from the past 30 days.
- Last 15 days: Data from the past 15 days.
- Last 7 Days: Data from the past week.
- Yesterday: Data for the previous day.
-
Filter by Segments
Click the Visitor Segments filter and select from various segmentation options to focus on specific visitor groups. For more information on segmentation, see Report Segmentation in VWO. -
Report-specific Filters
Use additional filters tailored to metric-specific requirements. Choose from:
- Metric URL: Filter data for specific URLs associated with the metric.
-
Metric Property: Depending on the metric configuration, this option lets you filter reports based on the metric property. For example for revenue metrics, filter reports by revenue value.
NOTE: The Metric Property option is available in the dropdown only if the metric being tracked is tracking a property.
Metric Overview Chart
The metric overview chart provides a visual overview of the conversion rate data over a specified period. This helps you monitor the number of conversions or metric properties such as Revenue over time. Applying a date, segment, or report-specific filter updates the metric overview chart instantaneously to reflect the filtered data.
Integrations with other VWO Features
From this section, you can seamlessly integrate metric reports with other VWO features such as funnels, heatmaps, and session recordings. By combining quantitative metrics from the report, you can not only track the events, but also understand why users behave a certain way. This provides a holistic view of user behavior and website performance. It enables you to design custom optimization strategies, leading to enhanced conversion rates and improved user experiences.
For example, your e-commerce store notices that users with high-value carts exhibit high drop-off rates. The metric report reveals that users with high cart values have a higher abandonment rate than lower cart values.
You can integrate metric reports with:
-
Funnels: To analyze metrics within connected funnels and understand drop-off points and user behavior.
Observation: You find that most drop-offs occur on the payment page.
-
Heatmaps: To view heatmaps of pages related to the metric and understand user interaction and identify areas of interest.
Observation: The payment page’s heatmap shows users hesitate near the payments section.
-
Session Recordings: To watch session recordings of users who converted or did not convert for your chosen metric and gain qualitative insights.
Observation: Further analysis of the session recordings reveal users click repeatedly on payment methods, likely looking for more options.
Based on these insights and observations, you decide to add more payment options. Post the implementation, you notice conversion rates for high-value carts have increased, boosting overall revenue.
Best Practices
To get the most value from metric reports, here are some recommended best practices you can follow:
-
Integrate with other features for deeper analysis
Metric reports offer you a great starting point on what to optimize. Integrate them with heatmaps, funnels,and session recordings to understand why users behave a certain way. This deeper understanding of user behavior helps you create strong, data-backed hypotheses that can drive experimentation and growth. -
Manage sampling rates
Optimize sampling settings based on your traffic volume and testing needs. A higher sampling rate provides more comprehensive data, whereas a lower sampling rate will speed up reporting. To ensure reliable data and trends, use VWO’s flexible sampling. -
Define clear objectives before generating reports
Before creating a metric report, define the specific questions to get required answers. For example, Are mobile users converting less than desktop users? or Is our new checkout process reducing the drop-off rate? -
Segment your data
Use segments to analyze metrics for different user groups and identify areas for targeted optimization. For example, segment data by user type, device, or location to identify specific optimization opportunities. For example, if visitors from paid ads have a lower conversion rate than organic visitors, you may need to refine your ad campaigns.
-
Regularly monitor the metric reports
Don’t check reports only after a test has ended. To identify trends and anomalies, monitor them regularly to ensure you review the early trends, seasonal changes, or unexpected spikes.
FAQs
-
Is the metric report data based on sampled visitors?
Yes, VWO dynamically samples visitors to ensure that reliable data is captured. It provides an option to manually customize the sampling rate using Flexible Sampling. -
What types of metrics can I track?
You can track any Data360 metric in a metric report. For more information, see Working with Metrics in VWO. -
How often is the data in metric reports updated?
The data updates dynamically in real time. -
For what duration can I continue to track the trend of a metric?
The retention rates depend on your VWO Insights plan. Enterprise accounts get a 3-month retention period.
Need more help?
For more information or further assistance, contact VWO Support.