Data & reports: generalities and definitions
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AB Tasty gives you the capability to create different types of campaigns, and regarding their type, you’ll need to follow metrics to make the right decisions.
The are based on a hypothesis: is the evolution idea I have in mind better for my website (whatever the decision metric) than the current product version?
They need at least one - one main metric to follow - to make a decision.
This is the purpose of a test: to be able to base the final decision on specific and reliable data. are made to double check that there are no critical collateral impacts.
📎 For testing activities, implementing events/trackers and following metrics based on them is mandatory. 📎 The more goals you select for your campaign, the more detailed information you will have, but the harder the decision-making will be.
The are not based on testing a hypothesis. Their objective is to push what you think the best message is to the best audience segment.
As you already know that your customized content will help your visitors to convert more, to get visitors to adopt the behavior you want to boost, following the relative metrics is not mandatory, even if it is advised.
For Personalization activities, implementing events/trackers and following metrics based on them is recommended to keep an eye on the general performance of your website.
Personalization initiatives might also be the result of a deeper analysis of an A/B Test campaign's result - filter features might highlight higher performances on your traffic attributes (device, loyalty, etc.).
The are designed to push a fix to your website in seconds. The objective is to deploy fast, for all the traffic, waiting for a hardcoded and more definitive fix.
For Patch activities, the follow-up of the performance is not relevant.
An event is a simple interaction between a visitor and your website.
It can be:
A click
A hover
A pageview
A transaction
A bounce
A scroll
The number of seconds on a page
A form-filling
A validation
An upload/download
An element that arrives on the visible screen area (above the fold) etc.
By gathering and adding up the various events, at the level of a single session, several sessions, and the traffic as a whole, we can build specific trackers and metrics.
Tracking events are the base of every analytics tool and constitute the primary material to build metrics.
There are two ways to count events:
At a unique visitor level - unique count That means that we count only 1x a visitor that will trigger a specific event twice or more. In this case, we remember that the visitor did the action versus the other ones who didn’t do the action. It’s a boolean way to count events.
At a session level - multiple count That means that we count Nx a visitor that will trigger a specific event twice or more. In this case, we can follow the frequency of an event and calculate an average of performed events per session.
These will be useful to know if you need to check your metrics at a unique visitor level (to track the percentage of visitors that have done a certain action vs. those who did nothing) or at a session level (to track the frequency of an event).
A metric is a calculation, specifically:
Metric = number or average number of events that occurred / number of visitors or sessions
Metrics are useful to challenge a recorded number of events relative to the total number of occasions to perform them.
You’ll find:
Click rates aka Action Tracking
Pageviews
Scroll rate
Average time spent on page
Transaction rate
Bounce rate
Average number of viewed pages etc.
A goal is a metric that you will follow as a priority throughout your campaign, guiding you to make a decision at the end of your campaign. This is one of your main objectives.
When you create a campaign, you will have a hypothesis: “Changing this element will positively impact the visitor’s behavior by helping them to perform more of this specific action.”
e.g. Changing the color of a CTA from red to blue will be more calming, so visitors will click more.
The Primary Goal should be the metric based on the event that will be most impacted by your change. For example, any change on a specific block can have a direct effect on the click event on this element, or on the time spent on the page, depending on the nature of the change (add some digest content, highlight an action, etc.).
So you will have to create a tracker based on this event, in order to generate the calculation of a metric you will choose as your primary goal for your reporting.
⭐️ Tip: Choose the metric that seems obvious in terms of cause and effect. A change on a button > possibly more events "Click" > Click Rate
Your final decision should not be based on a secondary goal, especially since the link between the change on the website and its effect on an indirect event is not proven.
For example, we can’t be certain that a modification on a CTA on the product page will have a direct impact on the transaction rate, as the event "transaction" is too far removed from the modification (it might be 3 or 4 pages away from the event and the goal, which is not close enough to be certain).
Still, it can be interesting to create and follow relevant secondary goals, including:
Keeping track of the most important metrics for your business, such as the transaction rate if your business is an e-commerce website
Deciding between two variations in a test campaign: if the two variations are the same in terms of Primary Goal results, the Secondary Goals can help to find the best option
Definition: grouping of hits received from the same unique visitor.
The session is closed after 30 minutes of inactivity, or every night at 2am depending on the time zone.
The session view will calculate and display metrics based on all collected events, though all sessions.
AB Tasty variable: sessionID
The visitor view will calculate and display metrics based on users that have performed an event linked to the tracker at least one time though its sessions.
In the reporting, select type of data: visitor:
AB Tasty variable: visitorID
In the AB Tasty platform, especially in , you’ll encounter different terms that need to be defined.
A metric is based on an event and helps to analyze the number of collected events (or their mean/average) and compare it to a baseline, generally the total number of unique visitors or the total number of sessions. 📎 NB: You can run a campaign without setting goals, but it is strongly recommended against because you won’t be able to monitor the impact of your campaigns in AB Tasty’s .
To set-up your campaign goals, please refer to this .
In the reporting, select type of data: session:
To be recognized as a unique visitor, AB Tasty gives a unique visitorID to each website visitor that doesn’t get the . Then the visitorID is stored in the AB Tasty cookie.