Overview of Segmentation in VWO Feature Experimentation

Overview

Segmentation refers to the strategic classification of your website or app visitors into distinct cohorts. The classification can be based on shared characteristics such as behavior, demographics, or technology attributes. This targeted grouping enables you to deliver controlled feature rollouts, run targeted experiments, and deliver personalized experiences tailored to each segment’s unique needs and interests. Beyond targeting, you can also use these cohorts during experiment report analysis. This helps in filtering and interpreting results based on user attributes, regardless of how the traffic was initially segmented during rollout.

Here’s an example to provide more clarity.

A food delivery app wants to test a new one-click reorder feature. The team first tests it out for users in New York City (pre-segmentation by location), where order frequency is already high.

The feature flag ensures only NYC users see the new reorder option. Next, the team uses post-segmentation by device type to see how adoption differs between desktop users (who often order from offices) and mobile users (who typically order on the go).

Outcome

The analysis shows mobile users in NYC adopt the one-click reorder much more than desktop users. This insight confirms that the feature is most valuable for mobile-heavy contexts, and the team decides to optimize the UI for smaller screens before expanding to other regions.

Types of Segmentation in VWO Feature Experimentation

VWO Feature Experimentation supports two types of segmentation to enhance experiment precision and analysis:

• Pre-segmentation is applied during data collection, ensuring that only users who meet specified targeting conditions are exposed to the feature or included in the experiment.
• Post-segmentation is used during analysis, allowing you to filter and interpret experiment results based on user attributes or behavior, regardless of how the traffic was originally segmented.

For more information on how to apply segmentation, see Configure Segmentation in VWO Feature Experimentation.

You can apply segmentation at different stages of an experiment (while setting it up or analyzing the results), but it also depends on the type of segment you define. Let’s review the segment types VWO Feature Experimentation supports.

Types of Segments in VWO Feature Experimentation

Feature Experimentation supports three types of segments: Standard Segments, My Segments, and Custom Segments.

Standard Segments

Standard Segments provide predefined visitor groups you can readily use in your experiments. They allow you to target specific cohorts, such as visitors by device type or operating system, without creating custom segments.

My Segments

My Segments allow you to access and manage the visitor groups you have previously created and saved. They provide a quick way to reuse segments across experiments without redefining rules each time. You can edit, clone, or delete your saved segments as needed. 

For more information on how to do this, see What are Saved Segments in VWO?

Custom Segments

Custom Segments let you define visitor groups based on specific user attributes.

VWO provides several standard attributes out of the box, for example, Device Type, Operating System, Browser, OS Version, Browser Version, and App Version. These attributes represent common visitor details that can be used to create segments.

• In client-side SDKs, these attributes are automatically available, and many of them are auto-inferred (for example, VWO can detect the visitor’s browser and device type without requiring you to explicitly pass the data).
• In server-side SDKs, since VWO does not inherently capture user device or browser context, you must enable the Gateway Service to fetch and evaluate these attributes. See how to enable VWO’s Feature Experimentation Gateway Service.

user context Object

When using custom segments, VWO relies on the user context object to target and assign users to campaigns. This context requires an ID (a unique identifier for each user), which helps VWO deliver consistent experiments to users across sessions. Along with this unique identifier, it also includes details such as:

• custom-variables: User-specific data points for targeting and personalized experiences.
• userAgent: Information about the user's device, browser, or operating system.
• ipAddress: Location-based data to enable geo-targeting.

VWO relies on these details to ensure correct targeting and segmentation. The unique ID is mandatory, while the other details are optional and only included if passed.

VWO provides the following built-in attributes you can use while defining a custom segment:

For Client-side SDKs

For Server-side SDKs

Auto-infer Caveats

For Client-side SDKs (Mobile & Web):

• For web and mobile SDKs, VWO auto-infers the attribute values when you provide the userAgent.
• However, for web SDKs (such as, JavaScript, React), if you don’t provide a user agent, VWO auto-infers it by default.
• For the locale attribute, VWO auto-infers values only if you provide both, the userAgent and ipAddress.

For Server-side SDKs:

• Passing a userAgent is mandatory.
• For attributes such as Operating System, Browser, and Device Type, VWO auto-infers values only if you provide the userAgent.
• For the Location attribute, VWO auto-infers values only if you provide ipAddress.

Ensure you define the user context object to identify and provide user-specific details. See Defining User Context in Node.js for an example. For other SDKs such as Java, Python, and more, refer to the respective setup guides.

Advanced Custom Segmentation using Custom Variables

If you want to target visitors using attributes beyond the built-in ones, or based on your own business-specific information, you can define a custom variable. VWO also allows you to use the same visitor data (passed through custom variables) for reporting and analysis in post-segmentation by passing the variable as a custom attribute. For more information, see How to Pass Custom Attributes for Post-Segmentation. Once they are passed and registered, they become available in reports for post-segmentation. This allows you to control both, who sees an experiment and later break down the results to understand how different user groups performed.

The next step is to start applying the segments in your experiments. For more information on how to leverage these features for pre-segmentation and post-segmentation, see Configure Segmentation in VWO Feature Experimentation.

Need more help?

For further assistance or more information, contact VWO Support.