Conversion goals for websites

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Conversion goals track business objectives by monitoring user interactions on websites across releases.

Creating conversion goals

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To create a conversion goal, complete the following steps:

Prerequisites

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You need to have the following permissions to create a conversion goal:

  • Permission to access the target website.
  • Permission to create, edit, and delete website conversion goals for business impact.

Procedure

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  1. Go to Websites & mobile apps > Websites, and select a website.

  2. On the Business impact tab, click View all in the Conversion goals tile.

  3. Click Create conversion goal.

  4. Define the conversion goal:

    1. Select a beacon type: Page views, HTTP requests, and Custom events.

    2. Add at least one filter through the query builder.

      Figure 1. Define conversion goals

  5. Click Next.

  6. Enter conversion goal details: Provide a name for the goal and an optional description. Conversion goal names must be unique within the tenant unit.

    Figure 2. Enter conversion goal details

  7. Click Create.

You can see the conversion goal that is created in the table on the Conversion goals dashboard of the website.

Viewing all conversion goals

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To view all conversion goals of a website and their performance metrics, click View all on the Conversion goals card of the website dashboard as shown in the following image:

Figure 3. Conversion goals table

The table includes the following information:

  • Conversion goal name: The name of the conversion goal. Click the name to navigate to the detailed conversion goal dashboard.
  • Description: An optional user-defined text description.
  • Sessions: The percentage of total sessions that reached the conversion goal (see Conversion rate calculation) and the absolute number of converted sessions.
  • Users: The percentage of total users that reached the conversion goal (see Conversion rate calculation) and the absolute number of converted users.
  • Average time to convert: The average time that users take to complete a conversion goal, displayed in a human-readable format (for example, 2.5 s or 1.2 m). This metric helps you understand how long users typically take to achieve the conversion goal from their first interaction.
  • Priority level: Indicates whether this goal is set as the primary conversion goal for the website. Only one goal can be marked as primary; other goals have this field empty.

You can sort the table by clicking the column headers for Conversion goal name, Sessions, Users, or Priority level.

Viewing conversion goal metrics

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From the conversion goals table, click the name of a conversion goal to navigate to its dashboard as shown in the following image:

Figure 4. Conversion goal dashboard

The dashboard displays key performance indicators (KPIs) and time-series charts:

Key performance indicators

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  • Converted sessions: Displays the conversion rate as a percentage and the absolute count of converted sessions. This metric indicates the percentage of sessions that achieved the conversion goal. For more information, see Conversion rate calculation.
  • Converted users: Displays the user conversion rate as a percentage and the absolute count of converted users. This metric indicates the percentage of unique users that achieved the conversion goal. For more information, see Conversion rate calculation.

  • Average time to convert: Displays the average time that sessions take to complete the conversion goal, measured from the first interaction. The time is shown in a human-readable format (for example, 2.5 s for 2.5 seconds or 1.2 m for 1.2 minutes).

Time-series charts

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Below the KPI cards, the dashboard displays three time-series charts showing conversion metrics over time:

  • Converted sessions chart: A stacked bar chart that displays the number of converted sessions over time. This visualization helps you identify trends and patterns in session conversions.

  • Converted users chart: A stacked bar chart that displays the number of converted users over time. This visualization helps you track unique user conversions and identify growth patterns.

  • Average time to convert chart: A stacked bar chart that displays the average time to convert over time for session

All charts include marker lanes that show releases and alerts to help you visualize how deployments and incidents affect conversion metrics.

Filtering conversion goal metrics

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Each conversion goal must have a beacon type and at least one filter defined. When viewing a conversion goal, additional filters can be applied by using the Filters bar at the beginning of the Conversion goal dashboard to see the subsets of conversions.

Figure 5. Firefox users goal configuration

The following example shows the Firefox users conversion goal that tracks sessions and users on the robotshop website who use the Firefox browser.

Figure 6. Firefox users goal summary

In the following example:

  • 27.92% (611 of 2,188 sessions) of all sessions on the robotshop website are using the Firefox browser, which means they are converted sessions.
  • 27.77% (5 of 18 users) of all users on the robotshop website are using the Firefox browser, which means they are converted users.

Additional filters can be applied to the conversion goal to drill down into a subset of the conversions. For example, to see the subset of conversions for United States Firefox users and sessions, the following filter can be applied:

Figure 7. Firefox users goal with geograhic filters

After applying the United States country filter, the number of converted sessions decreased to 21.36% (125 of the total 611 sessions) of all converted sessions, which means 21.36% of all Firefox sessions are in the United States.

Primary conversion goals

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You can designate one conversion goal as the primary goal for a website. Primary conversion goals help you:

  • Focus on your most important business objective
  • Quickly identify top-priority metrics across multiple websites
  • Track your primary conversion goal rate directly from the websites list

To set a conversion goal as primary:

  1. When creating a new conversion goal, set Primary goal to on in the goal details step.
  2. When editing an existing conversion goal, on the Configuration tab, set Primary goal to on.
Note: Only one conversion goal can be set as primary per website. Setting a new goal as primary automatically removes the primary designation from the previously set primary goal.

Viewing primary conversion goal rate

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The primary conversion goal rate is displayed in the Websites list for quick access to your most important conversion metric:

  1. Go to Websites & mobile apps > Websites.
  2. In the websites table, locate the Primary conversion goal rate column. The column displays the conversion rate percentage for each website's primary goal.
  3. Click the percentage to navigate directly to the primary conversion goal's detailed dashboard.

If a website does not have a primary conversion goal set, the column is empty.

Updating conversion goals

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Before you update conversion goals, ensure that you have the appropriate permissions.

To update conversion goals, complete the following steps:

  1. From the Conversion goals table, click the name of a conversion goal to navigate to its dashboard.

  2. On the Configuration tab, edit conversion goal details:

    1. Update the name of the conversion goal.
    2. Edit the optional description for the conversion goal.
    3. If needed, set Primary goal to on.

  3. Define the conversion goal:

    1. Edit the beacon type.
    2. Add or remove filters to further refine your selection.

  4. Click Save.

Removing conversion goals

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If you no longer choose to monitor a conversion goal, complete the following steps. To remove conversion goals, you need appropriate permissions.

  1. From the Conversion goals table, click the name of a conversion goal to navigate to its dashboard.

  2. In the Configuration tab, click Remove conversion goal.

A confirmation dialog is displayed to prevent accidental deletion.

Conversion rate calculation

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Instana calculates the following conversion rate metrics:

  • Session conversion rate: Percentage of sessions where the defined conversion goal was achieved.

    Session Conversion Rate = (Number of converted sessions / Total number of sessions) × 100

    Session conversion rates calculation based on the applied filters:

    Session Conversion Rate = (Number of converted sessions that match the applied filters / Total number of sessions that match the applied filters) × 100

  • User conversion rate: Percentage of unique users who achieved the defined conversion goal.

    User Conversion Rate = (Number of Converted Users / Total Number of Users) × 100

    User conversion rates calculation based on the applied filters:

    User Conversion Rate = (Number of converted users that match the applied filters / Total number of users that match the applied filters) × 100
Note: For a step-by-step example of how the filters affect the conversion rate, see Filtering conversion goal metrics.