Insights

When to use it

• “How many people signed up each day this month?”
• “What is our average order value, week by week?”
• “Which plan uses the export feature most?”
• “What share of visitors start a trial?” (two series and a formula)

For steps in order, use Funnels. For whether people come back, use Retention.

Build an insight

1. Go to Insights and click New insight. It starts as Any event counted as Total events, drawn as a daily line.
2. Under Series, pick an event. The picker has tabs for All, Your events, Autocaptured and Recent, and you can type a name that hasn’t arrived yet. The row you highlight is previewed on the right: its description, its volume over the last 30 days, and its properties.
3. Choose a measure, such as Unique people.
4. To narrow this series only, click Where and add up to five property filters.
5. Click Add series to compare another event on the same chart. You can have up to five series, lettered A to E.
6. Set the date range, source and segment in the filter bar. Those apply to every series.
7. Click Save and pick a board to put it on, or Save without a board. See Saving and sharing.

You don’t have to name it. Until you do, the title follows the query, such as Unique people on Signed up, and an auto-named · click to rename chip sits beside it. Click the chip, or the title, to type your own.

A new series copies the one before it, counted as Unique people. So to compare “signed up” and “started trial”, add a series and change only the event.

Measures

The property measures ask for a Numeric property, and the picker lists only numeric properties seen on recent events. Send numbers as numbers (49, not "49") so they show up here.

Breakdowns

Click Add breakdown to split every series by a property. The picker lists Event properties (such as Country or UTM source) and Person properties, which use each person’s newest traits from identify, such as plan. The property you highlight shows its top values. At the foot, choose Top 5, Top 10 or Top 25. Everything else is grouped as Other. The breakdown then shows as a chip, such as Plan · top 5. Click it to change the property or the limit.

Referrer and UTM breakdowns use the visit’s values. See Referrer and UTM. To count each person once, by where they first came from in the range, pick First referrer. Page views broken down by First referrer match the Web overview’s referrers card.

Formulas

Click Add formula to combine series with letters, numbers, + − × ÷ and brackets. With two series it starts as B / A * 100, which is B as a percentage of A. You can give it a name, such as Signup rate. The formula takes effect when you press Enter or leave the field, and only once it reads correctly.

Charts and intervals

• Line, Stacked bar and Table show the metric over time. If the series in a stacked bar count different measures, they stand side by side instead of stacking.
• Bar, Big number and Pie total the whole range. Pie needs exactly one series, no formula, and a breakdown.
• Interval: Hourly, Daily, Weekly or Monthly. A range of a single day is always hourly, and Hourly works for ranges up to 31 days.
• Rolling window: 7-day or 28-day average or sum, with the Daily interval. Sums only apply to counts and sums.
• Cumulative adds each point to the ones before it. It works for Total events, Unique people, Sessions and Sum. Averages don’t add up, so it is unavailable for them.

Click a legend entry to hide or show a line. With Compare on, you get previous-period lines, a “was” figure, the change, and a Previous column in the Table chart.

The data table

Under the chart, a table lists every line with its colour, its total over the range and its Share of its series. With Compare on, a vs prev. column shows the change. Click a column header to sort. With more than eight lines, a search box appears. Click a total to open that line’s point menu. The Table and Big number charts already show these figures, so they skip it.

Drilling into a point

Click a point, or anywhere in its column, or focus it with the keyboard and press Enter. A small menu opens with what the point is, its value and its change from the point before. What it offers depends on the point:

• Filter to and Exclude a breakdown value, such as Filter to Chrome. This adds a filter to the report’s filter bar.
• Zoom into a day, by hour, on a daily chart.
• See the people, or the exact count when the series counts Unique people. The list comes from the most recent 50 matching events, and you can open a person from it.
• See their events, What did they do next? (opens Flows), and Save these people as a segment.

You can’t drill into a formula line, into Other, or into a person-property breakdown.

Switching report type

Next to the title, Insight, Funnel, Flow and Retention switch this question to another report type. Hover a type to see what carries over and what you still need to pick. Clicking it opens that report’s page with your events, filters and date range already filled in. Nothing is saved, and this insight stays as it was. Use Undo on the toast, or go back, to return.

Saving and sharing

• The first Save opens Save to a board. Pick a recent board, search for one, or name a New board… in place, and the insight is saved with a tile on that board. Save without a board keeps it in Insights only.
• Insights are saved for the whole project. The list has All and Mine (the ones you made), with search and sorting by Recently updated, Name A–Z or Created.
• Unsaved changes appears in the header when you have edited a saved insight. Save overwrites it. With nothing to save, the button reads Saved ✓. Save as new, which makes a copy, is in the … menu.
• The whole insight lives in the page address, so you can paste the link to a teammate who is a member of the project.
• Export CSV downloads the table.
• Add to board… in the … menu puts a saved insight on another board. It works when there are no unsaved changes. The tile stays linked, so later edits show up on the board too.
• Delete insight, also in the … menu, removes it for everyone. Any board tile linked to it will say so. You can undo from the toast.

Tips and gotchas

• Charts are capped at 5,000 points. If you hit it, shorten the range, widen the interval or lower the breakdown limit.
• Hidden and merged events in Lexicon are folded out of the event picker. A merged name counts as the event it was merged into.
• A link that doesn’t quite fit is adjusted rather than rejected, and the page says what changed.

Recipes