Depths of engagement provide a way to measure user activity on your site or app during individual visits. By focusing on the visit rather than the visitor, you can assess the level of goal achievement within each session. The goal is to determine how far users progress towards key actions, such as purchasing a product or viewing important content. Only the highest priority depth of engagement reached during a visit is recorded.
1 Understanding the Concept
The configuration of depths of engagement is centered around defining your website’s primary goal and assigning priorities to key actions that lead to achieving this goal. These steps are then tracked to give insights into how visitors engage with your content or products.
Main Goal: The highest-priority depth of engagement should represent the main objective for users visiting the site (e.g., completing a purchase).
Intermediate Steps: Lower-priority depths represent actions that users take on their way to reaching the main goal (e.g., viewing a product, adding it to the shopping cart).
Example: Depths of Engagement for an Online Shop
The following table shows how different actions within an online shopping experience are prioritized. Each action represents a step toward the main goal of purchasing a product.
Priority | Depths of Engagement | Description |
|---|---|---|
20 | Buyers | Purchased a product |
15 | Checkout Cancellations | Access of a checkout page, but did not purchase |
10 | Shopping Cart Cancellations | Product placed in the shopping cart but did not access the checkout |
5 | Product Cancellations | Product viewed but did not add it to the shopping cart |
1 | Other Visits | No other depth of engagement |
Explanation: The priority system assigns a numerical value to each engagement action. A higher number indicates a more significant action in terms of business goals. For example, completing a purchase has the highest priority of 20, whereas merely viewing a product without taking further action has a much lower priority of 5.
Example: Depths of engagement for a Content-Driven Site
In the case of a content-driven website, the following actions reflect varying levels of user engagement with content and advertisements.
Priority | Depths of Engagement | Description |
|---|---|---|
20 | Ad click | Click on an advertising banner |
10 | Article view | An article page was viewed, but no ad banners were clicked |
1 | Not interested users | No articles viewed |
Explanation: In content-driven sites, advertising clicks often represent the main goal (Priority: 20), as they drive revenue. Viewing an article (Priority: 10) is important, but without engaging with ads, the user provides less value. A user who neither views an article nor engages with content (Priority: 1) represents minimal engagement.
By assigning higher priorities to actions that align with the site’s objectives, such as ad clicks, this system allows you to track user behavior and identify content that maximizes engagement and revenue.
2 Use Cases
A) Identifying Where Users Drop Off in the Funnel
This analysis helps you identify the specific steps where users drop out of the conversion process, allowing for targeted improvements to those stages.
Analysis: Visitors > Visits > Depths of Engagement.png)
Reading Example
Metric | Description |
|---|---|
Visits | In 74,644 visits the checkout was called, but a purchase was not made. |
Visits % | In 1.75 % of all visits, the checkout was called, but a purchase was not made. |
B) Understanding Exit Points by Device Type
This analysis reveals device-specific behaviors, helping you optimize the user experience based on the device used (e.g., mobile, desktop).
Analysis: Individual Analysis.png)
Reading Example
Metric | Description |
|---|---|
Visits | In 28,605 visits, a tablet was used and a purchase was made. |
Visits % | In 4.37 % of all visits via tablet, a purchase was made. |
C) Measuring the Percentage of Visits that Reach the Main Goal
This allows you to track how often visitors achieve the main goal over a defined time period, helping you understand overall goal achievement trends.
Analysis: Visitors > Time > Weeks.png)
Reading Example
Metric | Description |
|---|---|
Conversion Rate % (Buyers) | In 5,10 % of all visits in calendar week 43, a purchase was made. |
D) Analyzing Campaign Performance Across Depths of Engagement
This helps you see how different marketing channels contribute to users’ progression through various depths of engagement, enabling better campaign performance evaluation.
Analysis: Individual Analysis.png)
Reading Example
Metric | Description |
|---|---|
Visits % | 15,10 % of all visits came via the campaign channel "SEO". |
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Reading Example
Metric | Description |
|---|---|
Visits % | In 5,37 % of all visits via the campaign channel "SEO" a purchase was made. |
E) Tracking Abandoned Products for Buyers
This analysis shows products that were considered but ultimately not purchased by buyers within the same visit. It also provides the abandoned product value and shopping cart abandonment rate, helping to identify potential upsell opportunities or improvements for product pages. By focusing on users who made a purchase, you can gain insights into the items they left behind, which may highlight preferences or barriers to completing larger purchases.
Analysis: Individual Analysis.png)
Reading Example
Metric | Description |
|---|---|
Qty Abandoned Products | The product "p46879125" was added to the shopping cart 2,356 times, but not purchased within the visit. |
Abandoned Product Value | The not purchased products had a total value of 297,215.75 €. |
Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate % | 48.03 % of all products "p46879125", that were added to the shopping cart, were not purchased. |
3 Setting Up Depths of Engagement
To configure depths of engagement for your website, navigate to Mapp Q3 > Configuration > Depths of Engagement and follow these steps:
Create Depths of Engagement: For each key stage in the user journey (e.g., viewing a product, adding items to the cart, completing a purchase), create a distinct depth of engagement.
Define Filters: As part of creating each depth of engagement, assign a filter. Filters can be based on specific dimensions, such as pages or events, or on metrics like quantity of orders. These filters help focus the analysis on the specific criteria relevant to that depth.
Assign Priorities: For each depth of engagement, assign a priority that reflects the importance of the user action. Higher-priority depths represent more significant actions, like completing a purchase, while lower-priority depths represent earlier steps, such as viewing a product.
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4 How Depths of Engagement Are Assigned to Visits
Here’s an example of how visits can be categorized into different depths of engagement.
Setup
We are using the following setup:.png)
Visits with assigned Depth of Engagement
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The green user belongs to “Other Visits,” as they did not reach any higher depth of engagement.
The orange user belongs to “Shopping Cart Cancellations,” since this was the highest-priority step they reached.
The purple user belongs to “Buyers,” as this was the highest-priority step they reached.