Skip to main content

Popular business uses

Popular business uses

Example: Create a top products dashboard

You can configure Tealeaf to better understand your customer's buying habits. Follow the steps in this example to create a dashboard that shows you what your customer's are adding to their shopping carts.

This example steps you through the process of creating the hit attributes, dimensions, and events that capture visitor information and the products they add to their shopping carts. You can follow a few simple steps to create a report in which the data is segmented according to the dimensions that you created. You can then add the report to an existing dashboard.

Enable extended user agent parsing

Before you can create a top products dashboard, verify that Tealeaf can capture information about who accesses your web application. To do that, you need to enable extended user agent parsing. solution has been enabled and configured to capture user agent information and to use the public standards to acquire the additional information.

A user agent is any device or entity that accesses your web application, such as desktop browsers, mobile devices, or search bots.

Extended user agent parsing is a component of the Reference session agent and it enables the capture of user agent information from the visitor's browser. This information can then be used to look up against a public standard, which provides much greater detail.

Tealeaf uses two public standards.

  • Browscap: This standard is used for fixed desktop user agents.

  • WURFL: This standard is used for mobile devices.

    The capture of mobile device information is a component of cxImpact, a separately licensed component of the Tealeaf CX platform.

Before you begin to follow ts scenario, verify that Reference session agent has been deployed and enabled in your pipeline and that extended user agent parsing has been enabled.

Acquire start and end tags for added products

To plan a top products dashboard, identify the response tags that bracket the product name when added to the shopping cart of your site.

In our example, the name of the product added to the shopping cart is always displayed between two uniquely identifiable bits of HTML. The hit attribute is populated by a consistent pattern in the response that is displayed between a Start tag and an End tag that you identify for Tealeaf. For this example, the tags are the following.

Start tag:


<ul class="messages"><li class="success-msg"><ul><li>

End tag:


 was successfully added to your shopping cart.
Note: There is a space before was.

Your site is likely to have a different set of tags in the response that brackets the product information.

Note: Before you continue, you must identify the response tags that bracket the product name when added to the shopping cart of your site. If you do not know this information, your event is unlikely to fire, and no reporting data will be present.

Create objects to collect the data

To collect the data for top products, you need to create several objects: dimensions, a hit attribute, a report group, and an event.

Create a dimension called Browser Platform

You start by creating a dimension called Browser Platform. This dimension is populated by the Browser OS hit attribute, which is one of the attributes provided by Tealeaf.

Confirm that extended user agent parsing is enabled in the Reference session agent.

A dimension is a piece of contextual information that can be recorded when an event occurs. In our example, the browser platform information can be configured to be recorded when an event occurs.

A hit attribute is a pattern of text that is detected in either the request or the response of a hit. In this case, the Browser OS hit attribute is preconfigured to detect the presence of a value indicating the operating system. This value is inserted into the request by extended user agent parsing.

When this hit attribute is detected, the detected value is recorded in the dimension that is configured in this step.

  1. Open the Event Manager by selecting Configure > Event Manager.
  2. In the Event Manager, click the Dimensions tab.
  3. Click New Dimension.
  4. In the Name field, enter Browser Platform.
  5. Select a hit attribute on which to base the dimension. Click Select > Hit attributes > enter Browser in the filter > select Browser OS.
  6. In the Populated With drop-down, select First Value on Page/Hit. Leave the other values at their default settings.
  7. To save your draft, click Save Draft.
  8. To commit your changes, click Save Changes in the toolbar.

The Browser Platform dimension is created.

Create a hit attribute called Add Product

You can create a new hit attribute, called Add Product, that is configured to gather the name of any product that is added to the shopping cart.

Modify the properties below to reflect the response pattern appropriate for your web application.

  1. To open the Event Manager, select Configure > Event Manager.
  2. In the Event Manager, click the Hit Attributes tab.
  3. Click New Hit Attribute.
  4. Configure the following properties and values.
    1. Name: Add Product
    2. Search In: Response
    3. Click Use Start Tag/End Tag.
    4. Change the following tags for your web application:
      • Start tag for our example: <ul class="messages"><li class="success-msg"><ul><li>
      • End tag for example: was successfully added to your shopping cart.
        Note: Make sure to include a space before was.
    5. Leave the other values as their default values.
  5. To save your draft, click Save Draft.
  6. To commit your changes, click Save Changes in the toolbar.

The hit attribute Add Product is created.

Create a dimension called Added Product

Now that you created the hit attribute Add Product, you can create a dimension to capture this information.

Create a dimension that is called Added Product, which is populated by the Add Product hit attribute. This dimension contains the list of products that are added to the shopping cart.

  1. To open the Event Manager, select Configure > Event Manager.
  2. In the Event Manager, click the Dimensions tab.
  3. Click New Dimension.
  4. Configure the following properties and values.
    1. Name: Added Product
    2. Populated by: Add Product hit attribute
    3. Leave other values as their defaults.
  5. To save your draft, click Save Draft.
  6. To commit your changes, click Save Changes in the toolbar.

The Added Product dimension is created.

Create report group called Browser Platform, Version, & Product

You can create an organizing structure known as a report group for efficient storage of dimensional data.

In this step you create three dimensions to capture three sets of information from different hit attributes:

  • Browser OS
  • Browser Version
  • Add Product

To help organize this information, you can create a report group to contain the three dimensions.

A report group is an organizing structure for dimensions. In the Report Builder, you can include multiple dimensions in a report if they belong to the same report group. This structure enables efficient storage of dimensional data while maintaining flexibility in reporting.

  • A report group can contain up to 4 dimensions.
  • A dimension must belong to at least one report group.

To create a report group that contains the dimensions Browser Platform, Version, and Product:

  1. To open the Event Manager, select Configure > Event Manager.
  2. In the Event Manager, click the Dimensions tab.
  3. Select Browser Platform, Browser Version and Added Product on the list of dimensions.
  4. Right-click and select Create Group using Dimensions.
  5. Configure the following properties and values.
    • In the Name field, enter Browser Platform, Version, & Product
    • Accept the default values for the remaining fields.
  6. To save your draft, click Save Draft.
  7. To commit your changes, click Save Changes in the toolbar.

The Browser Platform, Version, & Product report group is created with three dimensions in it.

Create an event called Add Product

Add the event Add Product, which is triggered whenever the hit attribute Add Product is detected. So, whenever a visitor adds a product to the shopping cart, this event is triggered, which allows you to track the number of products added. The value to record is the count of these products.

When the event is associated with the Browser Platform, Version, & Product report group, the contextual information that is contained in those dimensions is also written into the session whenever the event is recorded. So, that contextual information is available for reporting purposes.

  1. To open the Event Manager, select Configure > Event Manager.
  2. In the Event Manager, click the Events tab.
  3. Click New Event.
  4. Configure the following properties and values.
    1. For the Event Summary:
      • Name: Add Product
      • Evaluate On: Every Hit
      • Value Type: Count Only
    2. For the Condition step:
      • Select Hit Attribute: Add Product
      • For the Hit Attribute, verify that Hit Attribute Found and IsTrue are selected in the drop-down list.
    3. For the Value step, no additional configuration is required.
    4. For the Report Groups step, select Report Group: Browser Platform, Version, & Product.
    5. For the More Options step, no additional configuration is required.
  5. To save your draft, click Save Draft.
  6. To commit your changes, click Save Changes in the toolbar.

The new event is added to the list.

Find sessions that contain the new objects

Up to this point, you have created all of the data objects for this scenario. Although it takes time before the data can appear in a report, you can locate sessions containing the Add Product event and then test for the presence of these objects in the session.

It can take at least an hour before the data can appear in a report. A full day of data won't be available until the following day.

In the interim, to locate sessions containing the Add Product event and to test for the presence of these objects in the session:

  1. In the Portal, select Search > Active Sessions.
  2. The Active Session Search screen is displayed.
  3. In the left panel, click the Basic Search Fields panel.
  4. Click the Events link. An event search criterion is added to the search terms.
    1. Click <Select an event.
    2. In the Event Selector, expand the event label containing the Add Product event. Click the event and then click Select. The event is added to the search term.
    3. Do not select a dimension value. Leave it as <Any Dimension>.
  5. Click Search.

The search results include all currently active sessions in which the Add Product event has been detected.

Note: If no search results are returned, it is possible that no visitor has added a product to their shopping cart since the event was created. You may need to wait a while. Or, you can navigate the site to add your own product to your shopping cart.

Test the session for the presence of other objects

After you find a session where the Add Product event is present, you can send the event to the Event Tester to check for the presence of the other objects that you created.

The Event Tester is a Portal-based tool for testing for the presence of events and hit attributes against actual session data captured by Tealeaf. To use the Event Tester, you locate a valid test session through the Portal, mark the events and hit attributes for which you wish to test, and then view the results.

  1. In the list of returned active sessions, find a session that contains at least a few hits. In the session row, click the Event Tester icon.
  2. In the dialog, you might want to change the Description to something easier to locate, such as Test Session - Add Product. Click Send to Event Tester. Click OK to go immediately to the Event Tester.
  3. In the Event Tester, click the From Session radio button and verify that your session has been selected. Click Next.
  4. In the Select Events tab, click the event label containing the Add Product event. Double-click the event to add it to the list of tested events. Do not select any other events.
  5. Click the Hit Attributes tab.
  6. Add the following hit attributes:
    • System Hit Attributes > Browser OS
    • System Hit Attributes > Browser Version
  7. Click the View Results tab.
    1. Expand the Events node to display the Add Product event.
    2. Expand the node for one of the pages where the event fired.
    3. Open the Browser Platform, Version, & Product report group.
    4. The values for the Browser Platform, Browser Version and Added Product dimensions are displayed.
    5. Similarly, you can expand the Hit Attributes node to display the detected instances of the three underlying hit attributes, which are used to populate the dimensions.

The hit attributes, dimensions, and events that you created are firing properly in the captured sessions.

Create a report to include the Add Product event

After you validate the data objects you created and wait for data to accumulate for reporting purposes, you can create a report that uses the Add Product event in the Report Builder.

The Report Builder enables users to create ad-hoc reports from the events, dimensions, and ratios that they create through the Portal. This easy-to-use tool provides drag-and-drop capabilities for report creation, filtering, and drill-down analysis.

  1. To open the Report Builder, select Analyze > Report Builder from the Portal menu.
  2. In the Report Builder, click the Create Newbutton in the toolbar.
  3. Add the Add Product event:
    1. In the left panel, click Add Event.
    2. In the Event Selector, expand the event label where the Add Product event is stored.
    3. Click the check box next to the Add Product event.
  4. In Report Builder, click Add Event and select Add Product.

The Add Product event data is added to a new report.

Put Added Product on the x-axis

After the report is created, you can use the associated dimensions in the Browser Platform, Version, & Product report group to filter the results to show the added products that are based on browser platform, browser version, and specifically added products for your visitors.

To filter based on product, add the Added Product dimension to the X-axis.

  1. In the Report Builder, click the Dimensions tab in the left panel.
  2. Click the Add Product dimension and drag it to the X-axis.

The Report changes to include the Add Product dimension.

Set the Added Product dimension to show Top 5

You can now filter the dimension to show only the top dimension values. Since we are most interested in the behaviors of the top products, this filtering allows us to remove the minor products from the report so that we can focus on the most important products in our portfolio.

  1. Click the Added Product drop-down menu and select Filter.
  2. For the Filter Mode, select Top N.
  3. Set the dimension filter: Include only the top values by occurrence.
  4. Set Maximum Number of Values to Display: 5.
  5. Click Apply.

The Report shows only the Top 5 values.

Segment to show only browser platform WinXP

In the Report Builder, a segment can be applied to filter the data at a global level.

Suppose that you are interested in the top products that are sold to uses of Windows™ XP. In the steps below, you apply a segment to the report to display only the shopping cart additions that were initiated by visitors using Windows XP.

  1. In the Report Builder, click the Dimensions tab in the left panel.
  2. Click the Browser Platform dimension and drag it to the Segment.
  3. The Browser Platform is added as the report segment.
  4. Click the Browser Platform drop-down menu and select Filter.
  5. For the Filter Mode, select Filter by Value.
  6. Select Include only Selected Values.
  7. Click Add Values.
  8. Select All Values.
  9. All values are available for selection. Select WinXP.
  10. Click Apply.

The report now shows data for WinXP browser platform only.

Put Browser Version on Y-axis

You can also apply dimension that are filtering to the Y-axis of the report, as well. This filtering creates stacked charts, in which the displayed data is broken up based on the dimensional values that are included in the y-axis.

In the following steps, the Browser Version dimension is applied to the Y-axis to show stacked breakouts of the individual browser versions that are used when you add products.

  1. In the Report Builder, click the Dimensions tab in the left panel.
  2. Click the Browser Version dimension and drag it to the Segment.
  3. The Browser Version is added as the Y-axis dimension.
  4. Before you can add the report, you must save it. In the toolbar, click the Save icon. Enter a title for the report and click Save.

The report now shows data with Browser Version data as the y-axis dimension.

Add the report to a dashboard

After the report are saved in the Report Builder, you can add the report you created as a component to an existing dashboard.

This step allows you to surface in the Portal this report for easy review and, if necessary, drill-down to the report and its underlying data and sessions.

  1. If not done already, click the Save icon in the toolbar to save the report.
  2. When the report is configured to your liking in the Report Builder, click the Add Report to Dashboard icon in the toolbar.
  3. In the Add Report to Dashboard dialog, configure the following properties and values:
    1. Display: Select Chart to show the graphical chart or Table to show the data grid.
    2. Drilldown: Select Enabled to allow dashboard viewers to drill down to display the report in the Report Builder.
    3. Target Tab: In the Selector, navigate to select a dashboard and the tab within it to which you want to add the report.
  4. Click Create.

The report is added as a component to the selected dashboard tab.

As needed, dashboards can be exported from the system and emailed to selected recipients.

Related articles

community icon

Join the community

Ask questions, share best practices, and connect with fellow marketers.

Ask a question

Academy

Read how-to articles, guides, and more to help you on the path to success.

Learn more