About Metrics

A metric is a tool to track the accomplishment of a said event on your website during a campaign. This is similar to the conversion goals that you apply in your VWO campaigns. The Conversion Goals aim to assess the behavior of the visitors on your website. For example, tracking the clicks on an offer banner, tracking the number of page visits, etc. However, these goals are limited to the scope of a given campaign and cannot be applied to multiple campaigns. This means you need to create goals anew each time for each campaign. This could be a bit challenging if you are looking to measure the same aspects repeatedly. To overcome this, you can create a metric.

Metrics are custom-created conditions that can be used as a goal across campaigns. You can simply create one by supplying a name and description and define it with an objective and the corresponding URL, where the objective is to be carried out - just like setting up a goal in your campaign. However, for creating a metric to track a custom event or revenue, you need to apply a custom event and the corresponding property too. Besides tracking cumbersome events, metrics allow you to track the multiple conversions performed by a visitor, i.e., you can now track the number of times a visitor has purchased the same product repeatedly, the number of times he has attempted to make a payment, etc.

Creating Metrics in VWO

Let’s say you want to focus on the conversion rate of low-value purchases in your campaign. To do this, you first need to create a metric where you would track the cart addition events that have a value of, say, 50 or lower. To do this, from the main menu panel, access Data360 > Metrics. Click +Create and enter the details in the following fields:

Once the metric is in place, you are good to apply the metric to your VWO campaigns.

Common Use Cases

To create a metric, go to the main menu and navigate to Data360 > Metrics > Create. You can use the following use cases, each as a reference for creating a metric with a standard event and a custom event, respectively.

Track Clicks on a CTA

To track the clicks on a CTA, say a signup button on your homepage, you can easily do it by performing the following steps on the metrics creation page:

1. Enter a name for the metric in the Metric Name field.
2. From the Event you want to track for this metric dropdown, select Click.
3. Click on + where, which by default, will populate the Page URL option in the dropdown.
4. Specify the URL match conditions or select a page from the Page section in the URL match condition dropdown.
5. Specify the page URL in the adjacent field.
6. Once you have specified the page on which the signup button occurs, you need to specify the identifier for the button. To do that, click + and where select one of the following options and enter the value correspondingly in the subsequent field:
   • Target URL 
   • Selector Path
   • HTML Id 
   • HTML Class
   • HTML Tags
   • Text
7. In the Metric will measure section, select either Unique visitors or Event totals based on your requirement.
8. You can choose to add a description for easier reference by clicking on the Add description link.
9. Click Create.

Track Revenue Conversions

To create a metric to track the revenue conversions of your visitors, you need to start by creating an event to track the revenue. Then, you can use this event to create a metric that tracks the revenue generated for the purchase. 

By default, VWO tracks only the first conversion of the visitors. You can configure this setting to track the last value, average, sum, minimum value, or maximum value of the conversions made by a visitor.

To create an event to track the revenue, from the main menu, navigate to Data360 > Events > Create. You can refer to the following example to enter the values in the fields:

Once done, click Create. The purchase event is then created and listed under MY EVENTS. You now have to select the event and go to the API tab, where you can find the custom code for the event. 

Copy the code and paste it into the source code of the page (or use the methods as specified here) where you want to track the purchase event. In the code, the value of the event property is supplied with a placeholder string, usually <number_value>. Remember to replace this placeholder string with the revenue variable, failing which the revenue conversions will not be tracked.

ATTENTION: Stay cautioned that excluding an event's property from its code could lead to an appropriate loss in conversion tracking when applied in a campaign.

Next up, create a metric to track the revenue conversions. For this, from the main menu, navigate to Data360 > Metrics > Create and perform the following steps:

1. Enter a name for the metric in the Metric Name field.
2. As you need to track the revenue value in this case, you need to select the Value of an event property option.
3. From the for event dropdown, select the event that you created to track the purchases.

ATTENTION: Remember to use the same event that you created for the purpose of tracking the revenue, failing which the conversions may not be tracked.

4. As explained earlier, VWO, by default, uses the First value option to track the value of the first revenue conversion of an individual visitor. You can change this setting by selecting any other option from the dropdown.
5. Select the Format this metric as currency option to report the revenue conversions in the currency value that is set in your workspace.
6. Finally, click Create.

You can use this metric in your campaigns to track the revenue conversions of your visitors on the campaign pages.

Managing Metrics in VWO

Once a metric is created, you can modify or clone the same based on your need. In addition to that, you can also archive a metric that you no longer use. To do these operations, click on the metric that you wish to work on and perform the required action as follows:

Procedure

• To Edit - Click on the vertical ellipsis > select Edit, make the required changes, and click Save.
  
  
• To Clone - Click on the vertical ellipsis > select Clone, enter the metric name, apply the required changes, and click Save. The cloned metric appears on the left.
  
  
• To Archive - Click on the vertical ellipsis > select Archive. In the confirmation popup that appears, click on the Archive button. Upon archiving, the metrics appear under the ARCHIVED METRICS section. The number of archived metrics will also be displayed along with the section name in parentheses.
  
  NOTE: Any existing campaign that has been using these archived metrics will continue to use them. These archived metrics will appear in the Metrics section of the existing campaigns with an ‘ARCHIVED’ tag. However, these metrics will not be available for a new campaign or any existing campaign that hasn’t yet used them.
  
  An archived metric can be edited just like any other metric, cloned into a new metric, or unarchived to be used again in your campaigns.
  
  To unarchive, select the archived metric, click on the vertical ellipsis icon that appears at the top-right, and select the Unarchive option. In the confirmation popup that appears, click on the Unarchive button. Now, the metric will be moved from the ARCHIVED METRICS section to MY METRICS.

Applying Metrics in VWO

Metrics can be applied to campaigns to track the conversions of events. They can be applied to multiple campaigns at once and will be accessible to all users of the workspace with campaign creating/editing access.

Perform the following steps to apply the metrics to your A/B test or Personalize campaign:

For a New Campaign:

After setting up the campaign URL(s), applying the changes to your webpage(s) using the VWO Editor, and targeting your experiences (in case of a Personalize campaign), you arrive at the Metrics page, which looks like this:

Here, you get to add your primary metric and any secondary metrics that you might require. Adding a metric under the Primary metric and the Secondary metrics sections follows the same procedure. The primary metric is the one based on which VWO declares a variation as a winner or a smart decision. Both sections feature all the metrics that you have created in the Data360 module. You can search for a metric by entering the metric name or filtering them based on their type.

If you require creating a Metric right at the moment of creating a campaign, click on the Create a new metric option and enter the details as mentioned in this section. Once done, click Create. The created metric will appear in the list.

For an Existing Campaign:

Select the campaign and navigate to Configuration > Metrics. After applying the required changes, click Save Changes.