Cool custom report: Dayparts

by rocky

“Daypart” is marketingese for sections of the day that have different audiences and different audience behaviors. I generally consider marketingese language to be weirder than weird — i.e. don’t “socialize it with me,” just “talk to me about it”.

But the word “daypart” actually fills a need.

The daypart concept was somewhat useless in the online world until a few years ago when banner brokers and PPC vendors started offering the ability to schedule ads according to time of day. About the same time, a few pioneering e-comm sites changed their on-site teasers and promos according to daypart. Daypart analytics became more useful.

If you want to take advantage of these banner, PPC, and on-site promo scheduling capabilities you should have a solid idea of how visitor behaviors change at the end of the work day or on weekends.

It actually can get interesting. The last time I analyzed dayparts, the after-work visits for the same e-comm site were very different from the mid-day visits — longer in duration, fewer in page views, less window shopping, more doing. Although I didn’t solve the problem of matching up the same person using different computers at home and at work, I was pretty convinced that I was seeing work-home dichotomies for the same people. The “visiting organization” reports supported that interpretation too.

WebTrends’ SDC tag conveniently collects the local time of day for every hit. The tag asks the visiting computer for its local time zone (presumably correctly set in the first place by a human). SDC uses this to produce “Browsing Hour,” or “WT.bh”. WT.bh is an integer with a range 0-23. It doesn’t collect minutes. But it’s close enough for government work, eh?

You can create a separate, entire profile for each daypart, or you can do it for separate custom reports. Either way, you’ll need to make filters.

(I prefer doing a whole profile for each daypart of interest, so I can look at many things without creating lots of custom reports. And, with a whole profile, I also get cool stuff like content group paths.)

Approach #1: Filter a whole profile for a daypart

There are two smart tricks here:

- Smart trick #1: You’ll need to have two filters applied to your profile - one that includes the right time of day, and one that excludes all the days except the ones you want. You have to do an include/exclude combination because include filters are additive. In other words, combining an Include time-of-day filter with an Include day-of-week filter will result in a report on all activity that was either at the right time of day on any day, *OR* all day on the included days. That’s not what you want. (We have a whole post on filters and how they interact.)
- Smart trick #2: Create your time-of-day filter as a visit filter, not a hit filter. That way, visits that span an hour changeover point don’t get split up, which is what would happen if each hit were put into its own daypart. Use a visit filter that’s based on the value of the parameter WT.bh for the entry page.

The profile level time-of-day filter specifics:

In the admin: Web Analysis >> Options >> Visit Filters >> New Visit Filter
Filter Name: something like “Daypart – working hours”
Type: Include
Include/Exclude based upon: Entry Page
Entry Page: Page Expression: * (you want it to apply to any entry page)
New URL Parameter
URL Parameter: Parameter Name: WT.bh
Parameter Value: Equal to: 9-17 (or whatever)
NUMERIC – it’s important to specify that this is a numeric parameter
Done

The profile-level day of week filter specifics:

The instructions below are for a filter that excludes weekends, i.e. a filter that should be used in a report on weekdays. Change it to exclude weekdays if you want to study weekends.

In the admin: Web Analysis >> Options >> Hit Filters >> New Hit Filter (yeah, it has to be a hit filter; there’s no alternative. Adds a bit of noise since visits that span midnight on Sunday or Friday will get split up.)
Filter Name: something like “day of week – weekend EXCLUDE” (that’s how I do it)
Type: Exclude
Include/Exclude based upon: Day of week
After “Next” you’ll see a list of days. Check Saturday and Sunday.
Save and you’re done

That’s all. Make a profile, apply both filters, name it appropriately, have fun. Don’t get freaked when you open your profile and see the Overview Dashboard showing activity all through the day! Remember, the Overview Dashboard shows stats in terms of server time, so there will be daytime (in their local time) visitors who show up in the Overview Dashboard as nighttimers (in server time).

Approach #2: Filter a custom report for daypart

There are two smart tricks here:

- Smart trick #1: You’ll need to have two filters applied to your custom report – one that includes the right time of day, and one that excludes all the days except the ones you want. You have to do an include/exclude combination because include filters are additive. In other words, combining an Include time-of-day filter with an Include day-of-week filter will result in a report on all activity that was either at the right time of day for any day, *OR* all day on the included days. Get it? (We have a whole post on filters and how they interact.)
- Smart trick #2: Create your time-of-day filter as a visit filter, not a hit filter. That way, visits that span an hour changeover point don’t get split up. Use a visit filter that’s based on the value of the parameter WT.bh for the entry page.

The custom report time-of-day filter specifics:

In the admin: Web Analysis >> Report Configuration >> Custom Reports >> Filters >> New Filter
Filter Name: something like “Daypart – working hours”
Category: whatever you want
Type of Filter: Visit
Match any/all criteria choices: doesn’t matter
Add New Match Criteria
Filter on: Entry Page
Page Expression: Equal To: * (you want it to apply to any entry page)
New URL Parameter
URL Parameter: Parameter Name: WT.bh
Parameter Value: Equal to: 9-17 (or whatever)
NUMERIC – it’s important to specify that this is a numeric parameter
Done

The custom report day-of-week filter that excludes or includes weekends:

In the admin: Web Analysis >> Report Configuration >> Custom Reports >> Filters >> New Filter
Filter Name: something like “Day of week – weekend “
Category: whatever (I have a category called “Time”)
Type: Hit
Filter must match choices … doesn’t matter which you choose
Add New Match Criteria
Filter on: Day of week
Check the weekend days

That’s it. Use these in a custom report with the dimension(s) of your choice. Be sure to apply the daypart filter as an Include and the day of week filter as an Exclude.

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