Choose metrics

Metrics are a quantitative measure of the success of your experiment. They tell you whether the variations in an experiment are winning, losing, or inconclusive based on changes in visitor behavior in response to your experiment.

Optimizely creates metrics by aggregating events over time. Directly track actions like clicks, pageviews, form submissions, purchases, and scroll depth. After you create an event and add it to an experiment, you will decide how it is displayed as a metric.

Let us use a simple example. Suppose your site has an Add-to-Cart button. You would use an event to track every time the button is clicked. You would use a metric to measure the percentage of users who added to the cart at least once or, alternatively the average number of items added per user.

Every Optimizely experiment needs at least one metric. You can add or modify metrics at any time. View the metrics attached to your experiment on the Results page.

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Note

Check out our support center help article on the difference between goals, events, and metrics for a more in-depth explanation.

Identifying the right metric is a huge factor in determining whether your experiment will have statistically significant results. See these support center help articles:

• Choosing primary vs. secondary metrics
• When to use each type of metric
• Focusing on metrics that matter

When you are ready to start working with metrics, see our article on adding metrics to an experiment.

And of course, if you run into trouble, check out our article on troubleshooting metrics.