- Develop an overview of how metrics work in Optimizely Web Experimentation
- Begin to formulate a strategy for working with metrics in your experimentation program
In Optimizely Web Experimentation, a metric is a quantitative measurement of a visitor action that measures differences in visitor behavior that occur as a result of changes you make to your site. Metrics measure the success of your experiment by telling you whether an experiment is winning, losing, or inconclusive.
Metrics are created out of events, which directly track actions like clicks, pageviews, form submissions, purchases, and scroll depth. After you create an event and add them to an Optimizely Web Experimentation experiment or Optimizely Web Personalization campaign, you'll decide how it's displayed as a metric.
Suppose your site has an Add-to-Cart button. You would use an event to count the number of clicks on the button itself. You would use a metric to track something like unique conversions per visitor for visitors who actually click the button and add an item to their carts.
You can have an event without a metric, but you cannot have a metric that is not based on an event.
Every Optimizely Web Experimentation experiment needs at least one metric. You can add or modify metrics at any time. View the metrics attached to your experiment on the Results page. See the difference among goals, events, and metrics.
Identifying the right metric is a huge factor in determining whether your experiment will have statistically significant results. See choosing primary and secondary metrics.
Optimizely Web Experimentation lets you choose from several different metric templates, based on what you plan to measure in your experiments.
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