Understanding Visitor Metrics in Custom Reports

Products

Webtrends Analytics 9.x
Webtrends Analytics 8.x

Issue

Understanding Visitor Metrics in Custom Reports

Resolution

Webtrends Marketing Lab Analytics (MLA, aka “Analytics”) utilizes an aggregate analysis approach (i.e. not relational). Unlike Marketing Lab Warehouse (MLW, aka “Warehouse”), where visitor metrics are available across-the-board, the visitor metrics provided in MLA had to be specifically designed into the product on a case-by-case basis to support specific data sets. These MLA visitor metrics are therefore applicable only to the dimension for which it is designated.

Visitor metrics in custom reports have the following base requirements:

• Standard Analysis (Express Analysis and Basic Analysis [Basic Parent-Child profile] are not supported).
• Visitor History must be enabled (this is done on a per-profile basis).
• Certain visitor metrics require their corresponding Visitor History feature to be enabled (see below).

There are five categories of visitor metrics, each with corresponding measures (name and query parameter) and dimensional requirements:

Visitors (Requires “Visit History” be enabled under Visitor History)

• Daily Visitors – WT.vr.vt_d
• Weekly Visitors – WT.vr.vt_w
• Monthly Visitors – WT.vr.vt_m
• Quarterly Visitors – WT.vr.vt_q
• Yearly Visitors – WT.vr.vt_y
• New Visitors – WT.vr.vt_f

Strict dimensional requirements:

• 1D only
• Time Period dimension

Loose dimensional requirements:

Other fixed time dimensions:

• Hour of Day
• Day of Week
• Any value that does not change or is not likely to change for a visitor:
  • Initial referrer
  • Initial search engine
  • Initial search phrase
  • Geographic properties (DMA, country, etc.)
  • Visitor History segmentation parameters (depending on the nature of the segment data)

• Key Metrics Summary
• Buyers vs. Non-Buyers*
• New vs. Returning Visitors*
• Lifetime Values*

Buyers (Requires “Purchase History” be enabled under Visitor History)

• Daily Buyers – WT.vr.bt_d
• Weekly Buyers – WT.vr.bt_w
• Monthly Buyers – WT.vr.bt_m
• Quarterly Buyers – WT.vr.bt_q
• Yearly Buyers – WT.vr.bt_y
• New Buyers – WT.vr.bt_f

Strict dimensional requirements:

• 1D only
• Time Period dimension

Loose dimensional requirements:

• Other fixed time dimensions:
  • Hour of Day
  • Day of Week
• Any value that does not change or is not likely to change for a visitor:
  • Initial referrer
  • Initial search engine
  • Initial search phrase
  • Geographic properties (DMA, country, etc.)
  • Visitor History segmentation parameters (depending on the nature of the segment data)

• Key Metrics Summary
• Initial Referrers
• Initial Search Engines
• New vs. Repeat Buyers*
• Time Between Purchases*
• Sales Cycle (New Buyers)*
• Sales Cycle by Campaign (New Buyers)
• Sales Cycle by Product (New Buyers)
• Sales Cycle by Product Category (New Buyers)

* While the Visitor counts are determined only once per report period, these dimensions are determined each time a visitor concludes a visit and may change during a given report period. The Visitors measure reflects the state of the visitor during their first visit of the report period.

Page of Interest (Requires “Page of Interest Unique Visitor Tracking” be enabled under Visitor History)

• Daily Page of Interest Visitors – WT.vr.piv_d
• Weekly Page of Interest Visitors – WT.vr.piv_w
• Monthly Page of Interest Visitors – WT.vr.piv_m
• Quarterly Page of Interest Visitors – WT.vr.piv_q
• Yearly Page of Interest Visitors – WT.vr.piv_y
• New Page of Interest Visitors – WT.vr.piv_f

Strict dimensional requirements:

• 1D only
• Page of Interest dimension

Loose dimensional requirements

• Any custom dimension based on the root parameter WT.pi

Pre-configured reports that use the Page of Interest metrics:

• Pages of Interest

As a best practice, you should only identify key pages on your site with this parameter because WebTrends stores a maximum of 20 pages for each unique visitor for each profile.

Content of Interest (Requires “Content Group Unique Visitor Tracking” be enabled under Visitor History)

• Daily Content of Interest Visitors – WT.vr.cgv_d
• Weekly Content of Interest Visitors – WT.vr.cgv_w
• Monthly Content of Interest Visitors – WT.vr.cgv_m
• Quarterly Content of Interest Visitors – WT.vr.cgv_q
• Yearly Content of Interest Visitors – WT.vr.cgv_y
• New Content of Interest Visitors – WT.vr.cgv_f

Strict dimensional requirements:

• 1D only
• Content of Interest dimension

Loose dimensional requirements:

• Any custom dimension based on the root parameter WT.cg_n

Pre-configured reports that use the Content of Interest metric:

• Content Groups of Interest

If you would like to track visitors to a content group, recommendation would be to limit this to 10. This can be done with a filter to only include up to 10 or tagging only 10 content groups. Webtrends stores a maximum of 10 content groups for each unique visitor for each profile.

Campaign (Requires “Campaign History” be enabled under Visitor History)

• Daily Campaign Visitors – WT.vr.rac_d
• Weekly Campaign Visitors – WT.vr.rac_w
• Monthly Campaign Visitors – WT.vr.rac_m
• Quarterly Campaign Visitors – WT.vr.rac_q
• Yearly Campaign Visitors – WT.vr.rac_y
• New Campaign Visitors – WT.vr.rac_f

Strict dimensional requirements:

• 1D based on any Most Recent Campaign dimension
• 2D where both dimensions are based on any Most Recent Campaign dimension
• Examples of Most Recent Campaign Dimensions:
  • Most Recent Campaign ID
  • Most Recent Campaign Offer
  • Most Recent Campaign Creative

Loose dimensional requirements:

• Substitute Most Recent Campaign with custom dimensions based the same WT.vr_rac parameters
  • 1D Campaign drilldown
  • 2D with
    • Most Recent Campaign (First dimension)
    • Time Period (Second dimension)