My Favorite Parameter

October 20th, 2008 | Gareth Hebbron

Someone never asked me this week “What do you think is best Parameter in WebTrends Analytics?” Without hesitating for even a moment (I didn’t even blink) I was able to answer straight from (my man sized but well toned and shaped) gut with 100% conviction and certainty that WT.Seg_X was definitely THE all time best ever WebTrends parameter.

From my very first day in WebTrends boot camp I knew that WT.seg’s was very special. Its values get assigned to the field “WT.vhseg_X” in the Visitor History table which means they are attached to every hit of every subsequent visit that is associated with that particular visitor identifier.

Also WT.seg_X has an X in its name which is always cool and probably stands for eXtream or something like that like in the X-Games, DMX, or the X-Files which are all also cool. But the X is for far more than just aesthetics, it’s actually a number! WT.seg_X is actually 4 parameters; it’s a quadruple threat, the four brothers Grimm: WT.seg_1, WT.seg_2, WT.seg_3, & WT.seg_4. I know… sweet.

Of course to use seg_X you need to have Custom Visitor Segmentation enabled in the Visitor History of your profile. Any you have to log your WT.seg_X parameters via the query string, meta tags, or just setting it in the tag as a JavaScript variable. Then you can go ahead and start creating dimensions based on the WT.vhseg_X parameters.

What can you use it for? Anything, you have 4 parameters in which you can insert anything and have it associated with an entire visitor session. The coolest thing I have seen it used for though was for getting reporting on visitor metrics by demographics…

Web form pops up at that start of a visitor’s session “Help us make your experience better… get a 10% voucher for completing this…” or maybe on a registration or product order form.  Anyways… Age Group? Gender? Ethnicity?… The web form captures them all and POSTS to a thank you page. This same page is tagged with the parameters Seg_X (1 through 4) each of which is set with the values of the form submission.

Back in your Profile, Custom Visitor Segments is enabled in Visitor History. You create your dimensions… Age Group (WT.vhseg_1), Gender (WT.vhseg_2)… More than two segments? No problems! Create a Custom Drilldown dimension once you have all your standard ones set up.

Now you create your custom drill down report, throw your segment dimensions onto it, then add a visits, page views, dwell time, maybe some calculated measures, maybe some eCommerce measures, maybe even revenue? You got yourself a demographically segmented metrics report.

Why not go even further, use more custom parameters to supplement the Segmentation Parameters and record in them the answers to even more survey questions “How would you rate your visit?”, “What is your favorite/least favorite feature on our site?”. Set up some measures based on these custom parameters and you could be doing advanced survey visitor analysis with a closed loop to web metrics data in no time.