Will the Real Ad-hoc Segmentation Please Stand up? Part II

By Brian Strauss, Director of Sales Engineering —

In part one of this series I discussed the challenges inherent in ad-hoc segmentation and where many analytics solutions fall short. In this post, I'd like to focus on Tealeaf's unique approach to ad-hoc segmentation and how we are different from other solutions. Of course, ultimately, you get to be the judge of which solutions are most effective. It's like American Idol, but your criteria will be whether or not those solutions actually deliver on their promise of providing rapidly available and actionable data.


Visitor-level search with Tealeaf cxResults. Image courtesy of Tealeaf Technology

Tealeaf CX 8.2's method of ad-hoc segmentation, as realized with our cxResults product, picks up where web analytics products leave off. Not only does Tealeaf have the ability to produce real-time awareness of business trends (where web analytics data may be a day old), Tealeaf can also enhance that awareness with richer business insights than web analytics ad-hoc segmentation. So, for example, you might find yourself saying, "Not only are first-time visitors from campaign X having trouble, but that trouble is due to a completely unknown issue and it's costing us $500K a week."

Combining that insight with Tealeaf's advanced replay capabilities, you can actually uncover why it's happening! That means you can learn something about your customers that you didn't already know. The Tealeaf sessions contain all of the web data exchanged between the customer and your application—not just the data you tagged for. So now you'll find yourself saying, "Wow I had no idea the reason those first-time visitors from campaign X are not buying is because our application is telling them that the product they want—the one in the email campaign—is not actually available when they try to check out."

Okay, I know what you're thinking. "This is cool, but looking at data session by session sounds anecdotal and time consuming. Essentially, I now have the exact opposite problem I normally have with web analytics—instead of my data being too high-level, now it's too granular to be actionable. There are thousands of sessions in my segment—even if I've discovered a new issue I can't act on the data because I can't justify an optimization based on replaying just a few sessions, and I certainly don't have time to replay them all." This is where Tealeaf cxResults steps in to provide "next-gen" ad-hoc segmentation. With Tealeaf, not only is all of the data in the web stream available to replay, but all of this data is being indexed for ad-hoc searching. This is important because it means that we can take those very important anecdotal insights and then build a business case in a few seconds on something that we didn't know existed two minutes ago. You can ask, "Tell me the conversion rate and the basket totals for all people from campaign X over the last 14 days (the length of the campaign) who saw this product not available message that I didn't even know was occurring."

Can you justify a fix with a solid business case around this newly identified issue? You bet.

Only with ad-hoc segmentation as realized in Tealeaf cxResults can you uncover the most actionable data when it comes to driving website optimization. Not only can you put a fine point on a business problem, but you know why it's happening and you have a rapidly generated business case that allows you to act quickly to stop the bleeding of the online business. Tealeaf cxResults delivers a one-of-a-kind performance. And, unlike most American Idol winners, the record you produce with cxResults will pay dividends for years to come.

If you could perform any type of ad-hoc segmentation, what would it be?