The Latest SessionStack Release Introduces Segments Selection in Funnels, User Input, Contextual filter for Custom Events, and New Options for Visited URLs

We are happy to share with you our latest updates to the Segments and Funnels dashboards!

Segments Selection in Funnels Dashboard

Have you ever wondered where the line between Segments and Funnels is and what that difference is? We will provide you with an example to clear any doubts you might have.

Let’s assume the following use case. You have two main user types for your website: mobile users and desktop users. Your website is a booking platform for hotels. One of the main KPIs that you track is the booking rate = users who book hotels / total count of users visiting your platform. In order to measure this KPI you need to build a funnel with at least two steps:

1. All users who visited www. mydreamhotel. com
2. All users who booked a hotel from your website.

This funnel can be modified to a more extensive form (because not all visitors to your website are interested in booking a room. They can arrive on your website by accident or just doing research) as follows:

1. All users who visited www. mydreamhotel. com
2. All users who are searching for a hotel.
3. All users who booked a hotel from your website.

Suppose you do not want to measure this KPI for all users, but rather for different subsets of users. In your scenario, you wish to track the KPI for mobile and desktop users separately. To do that, you need to build two segments – one for mobile users and one for desktop users. Check out the examples below:

Now, having already defined 2 segments and one funnel, the next step is to select one of the already created segments in the Funnel configuration instead of the default setting: ‘All Users’.

To sum it up: a segment will tell you who your users are while a funnel provides information on what your users do.

New Event Filter: User Input

Our new event filter in the Segments dashboard is User Input. This new option helps you to:

• find all users who enter anything in an input field on your website. For the second radio option ‘CSS selector’ and type the string for the field.

Consider the following scenario: you want to look up all users who have searched for a hotel on your booking site. In this situation, copy the search bar’s CSS selector and put it into the filter option. Learn how to find and pick the CSS selector for any element on your website >> Once you’ve defined a value for the ‘User Input’ filter, you’ll be able to retrieve all of the users who search for a hotel.

• find all users who have entered a specific input in an input field on your website. Use the third radio option ‘Text is’ or the fourth option ‘Text contains’ and enter the specific input.

Consider this: you know that the most popular hotel on your platform is “XYZ.” But you have no idea who the users searching for this hotel are – whether they are using mobile devices or not, whether they are from a specific region, whether they are using a specific browser and version, what they are doing before and after the search, how frequently they visit your website log into your platform. Use the new filter ‘User Input’ with the option ‘Text is’ as shown below and you can get the answers to these questions in no time by filtering all users with the relevant sessions.

Consider the following scenario: you own an e-commerce site. You release various marketing campaigns with discount vouchers: {15OFFCmpSpr; 25OFFCmpSum; 30OFFCmpXmas }. You need to find all users who used such a voucher to make a purchase rather than a subset of users who used a voucher from a specific marketing campaign. In this scenario, select the ‘Text contains’ radio button and enter the common string for all coupons. Check out the image below.

• find users who have interacted with an input field or a search bar and you have no idea what they have typed or with which particular field they have engaged. In this case, use our first option ‘Anything’

Contextual Filter for Custom Events

We described Custom Events in one of our recent blog posts, including what needs they address and how to use them. We’ve added another feature to them today: the ‘Visited URL’ contextual filter, which allows you to search for users with a specific custom event on a specific page. More information can be found in the image below.

New Options for Visited URLs

The ‘Visited URL’ event filter offers more options now. Today, we want to show you how to use each one, whether it is new or old. To illustrate each option we will use the following URLs. Assume that each of the below-mentioned URLs has been visited at least by one user.

1. https://www.example.com/nuts/blog/structure-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b;q3=sp%0Ace#top
2. https://www.example.com/bolts/blog/structure-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b;q3=sp%0Ace#top
3. https://www.example.com/cakes/blog/strucutre-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b;q3=sp%0Ace#top
4. https://www.testblog.com

• If you use the option ‘contains’ and define a value: blog, all users who have visited any of the four URLs will be listed. Since each URL has been visited at least once, then in the results you will see users who have visited any of the listed URLs:

1. https://www.example.com/nuts/blog/structure-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b;q3=sp%0Ace#top
2. https://www.example.com/bolts/blog/structure-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b;q3=sp%0Ace#top
3. https://www.example.com/cakes/blog/structure-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b;q3=sp%0Ace#top
4. https://www.testblog.com

• If you select the option ‘starts with’ and define a value: go.example.com, then the result will include users who have visited any of the three next URLs:

1. https://www.example.com/nuts/blog/structure-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b;q3=sp%0Ace#top
2. https://www.example.com/bolts/blog/structure-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b;q3=sp%0Ace#top
3. https://www.example.com/cakes/blog/structure-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b;q3=sp%0Ace#top

If you select the option ‘ends with’ and define a value: blog.com, then the result will be all users who have visited at least once the https://www.testblog.com.

Before illustrating how to use the option ‘matching’, check out the URL structure on the image below. For this we will use the first URL:

• if you want to find the subset of users who have visited URLs containing the subfolder ‘blog’, you need to define: /blog. In this case, you will see on the list of users who visited:

1. https://www.example.com/nuts/blog/structure-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b;q3=sp%0Ace#top
2. https://www.example.com/bolts/blog/structure-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b;q3=sp%0Ace#top
3. https://www.example.com/cakes/blog/structure-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b;q3=sp%0Ace#top

• if you want to find the subset of users who have visited URLs containing the subfolder ‘nuts’, you need to define: /nuts. In this case, you will see on the list of users who visited:

https://www.example.com/nuts/blog/structure-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b;q3=sp%0Ace#top

• if you want to find the subset of users who have visited URLs containing specific parameters q and q2, then define the value for the ‘matching’ option as follows (NB: Parameters should be included with values if any of the query parameters is missing value, will be not executed search)

/structure-urls.html?q=s&q2=a+b