Real-Time Segmentation in SiteCatalyst
Currently, there is no way to do instant segmentation from within SiteCatalyst which is a real draw-back. For example, if you want to make a segment of all Visits where a visitor purchased something or logged-in, the only way to do this is thourgh a DataWarehouse Request, an ASI slot or Discover since there will be Page Views already collected prior to when the visitor took the action (Purchase or Login). This functionality is available in Google Analytics, but that is due to the fact that data is delayed by one day. I would be ok with having the option to delay my data (i.e. 24 hours) to have this functionality. Basically, there are many times when you want to wait until the entire Visit is dojne, before deciding which data set to send the data to.
Here is an example of why this is so critical. Let's say you want to see all of your data by Purchasers vs. Non-Purchasers, but you only know if they are a Purchaser by seeing if at some point in the Visit they bought something. Currently, to do this, you have to use ASI or Discover to create separate data sets for each of these and if you have multiple geographies, you can have 10-50 ASI slots or Discover Segments to do this. We need a way to build any segment on the fly in SiteCatalyst and see all historical data. A less elegant solution would be to give customers the option to delay processing (knowing they won’t get real-time data) and then allow them to apply a VISTA rule-like function to the data before it is processed. The former is much better and seems to be the trend…I would much prefer building 40-50 segments that can be applied to all reports in SiteCatalyst than having to build 40-50 ASI slots. Though this is available in Discover, not everyone has access to it and it is a hard tool to learn. I wouldn't need all of the functionality of Discover as part of this (i.e. infinite breakdowns)...