Working with Computed Events

Overview

In VWO, Events are used to track actions users take on your website or app, like clicking a button, visiting a page, or submitting a form. These events help you measure the results of your experiments and understand how users interact with your site. However, standard events only capture one action at a time and are not capable of tracking more complex user behaviors without making changes to your website’s tracking code.

Here’s where Computed Events in VWO Data360 come in. A computed event lets you create a new event by combining two or more existing events and adding filters to them if needed. 

For example, you can track both In-store purchases and Online purchases using a single computed event, Total Sales Revenue. This saves you the trouble of changing your site’s code and allows you to track metrics that matter to your business goals.

Computed events are ideal to use when you want to:

• Merge related events: In many SaaS platforms, a single user action might trigger multiple technical events. For instance, a user completes registration by clicking the Sign Up button (Event A) and submitting a form (Event B). Instead of tracking both events separately, you can merge them into a Computed Event called User Signup.

• Simplify funnels: Funnels often require users to pass through multiple touchpoints. But what if your app allows multiple pathways for a single action? Instead of creating a funnel step with complex logic, you can use a computed event as a single funnel step to track the overall goal. This reduces funnel complexity and helps focus on the intent, not the specific path.
  
  
• Unify event properties: You can standardize properties like revenue across different events. For example, you want a revenue report, but different events use different property names, such as Product.amount and Purchase.amount. With computed events, you can map these different revenue-related properties to a unified computed property, such as Combined Revenue.

Create Computed Events

To create a computed event:

1. Log in to your VWO account.
2. Navigate to Data360 > Events.
3. Click Create.
4. Define the Event Name (Total Sales Revenue in this example).
5. Select the Event Type as Computed.
6. Under the Definition section, add the source events you want to use for the new computed event. You can select a maximum of three source events to create a new computed event.
   In this example, we take In-Store Purchase and Online Purchase as source events to create a new computed event -Total Sales Revenue. This new computed event tracks whether a user:
   • Makes an Online Purchase OR
   • Makes an Offline Purchase

This allows you to track both events as a single logical event in Metrics or Funnel reports.

VWO treats this as [InStore Purchase OR Online Purchase]. If either of these events is triggered, the Total Sales Revenue computed event will be captured.

7. You can click +where below each event to narrow them down by specific conditions (as shown in the image above). For example, tracking an In-Store purchase event where Product Amount > 0

When creating a Computed Event, you can also define new properties to unify data from source events. This lets you create a single property that aggregates data from the source properties. 

To create computed properties:

1. Scroll down to the Mapped Properties section on the Create Computed Event page.
2. Click Create Computed Property.
3. In the Computed Property field, enter a meaningful name.
   For example, use Combined Revenue to track total revenue from in-store and online purchases.
4. Select the appropriate data type for the computed property:
   Number, Text, Boolean, etc., based on the type of data you want to unify.
5. In the Source Event dropdown, select the event (for example, In-Store Purchase or Online Purchase) from which you want to pull the property.
6. In the Source Property dropdown, select the specific property from the corresponding event (for example, Product Amount).
   Note: You can only map properties that share the same data type. For example, you cannot map a String property and a Number property to the same computed property.

   

7. Click Map another property to include more source events and their properties in the same computed property. This is useful if different events log similar values under different property names. For example, for the Combined Revenue property, you might map:
   1. Product.amount
   2. (And optionally) Purchase.amount, or Product.value.

You can add a short description to explain the purpose of this property (recommended for clarity in shared workspaces). Repeat the steps to create more computed properties.

8. Click Save Now to create the new computed event with mapped properties from source events.

Once you create this computed event, you can use it in Funnels or to create a new metric in Metrics, as shown in the following image:

In this example, we create a new metric, Total Computed Revenue, and use the computed event, Total Sales Revenue, to track the combined revenue generated.

Troubleshooting

Best Practices

• Name thoughtfully and clearly
  Use descriptive, intuitive names (for example, In-Store Purchase or Online Purchase) that instantly convey the purpose of the computed event to your team.
• Keep event selection focused
  Include only events that are logically connected. Adding too many unrelated events can complicate analysis and dilute insights.

FAQs

•  I created a computed property. Can I delete it later?
  No. Once a computed property mapping is saved, it cannot be deleted. You can, however, archive it or edit it to change the property mapping.
   
• What logic is used when merging multiple events?
  When you combine multiple events (such as Event A and Event B), they are merged using OR logic. This means the computed events will be triggered if either Event A OR Event B occurs.
   
• Can I remove events from a computed event's filter?
  You can remove events from the filter only if they are not used in any Property Mapping of that computed event.
   
• How many events can I include in the filter?
  You can include up to 3 events in total in the filter.
   
• Can the "where clause" be changed for any event in the filter?
  Yes, the where clause can be modified for any event in the filter.
   
• Can I add or remove property mappings?
  You can add new property mappings, but removal is not allowed.
   
• Can existing property mappings be edited?
  Yes, property mappings can be updated.
  .
• Will standard properties (like page_url) be shown in property mapping?
  No. Standard properties, including page_url from standard or custom events, will not be shown in Property Mapping. 
   
• Can a property be mapped from multiple properties of the same event?
  No. Each mapping must be from different events. For example, a mapping like compProp = e1.prop1 or e1.prop2 is not allowed.
   
• What properties are available when using a computed event in a metric?
  Only the properties created in Property Mapping for that computed event will be shown in the where clause filter and value of an event property dropdown.

Need more help?

For further assistance or more information, contact VWO Support.