Build Custom Reports
Why build custom reports
Section titled “Why build custom reports”Standard dashboards answer general questions — traffic trends, top pages, experiment results. But your organization has specific questions that pre-built views cannot answer. You might need to know which content category drives the most revenue, how a specific audience segment behaves compared to the overall population, or whether engagement differs between mobile and desktop visitors on pages that were part of an experiment.
Custom reports let you ask these specific questions without exporting data to a spreadsheet or requesting help from an analyst.
What you will do
Section titled “What you will do”- Open the report builder and select metrics
- Add dimensional breakdowns
- Apply filters to narrow the data
- Choose a visualization
- Save, share, and optionally schedule the report
Open the report builder
Section titled “Open the report builder”Navigate to Analytics > Reports in the Optimizely One sidebar. Select New Report to open the report builder.
The builder has four sections:
- Metrics (left panel) — What numbers to show
- Dimensions (top bar) — How to break down those numbers
- Filters (top bar) — Which subset of data to include
- Canvas (center) — The visualization of your report
Select metrics
Section titled “Select metrics”Metrics are the numbers your report measures. Select at least one metric to begin.
Standard metrics
Section titled “Standard metrics”| Metric | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Page views | Total pages viewed across all sessions |
| Unique visitors | Distinct visitors (deduplicated by cookie) |
| Sessions | Groups of interactions within a time window |
| Bounce rate | Percentage of single-page sessions |
| Conversion rate | Percentage of sessions with a goal completion |
| Revenue | Total purchase value (requires commerce tracking) |
| Average order value | Revenue divided by number of orders |
Custom metrics
Section titled “Custom metrics”If standard metrics do not cover your question, create a calculated metric:
- Select New Metric in the metrics panel
- Define the formula using existing metrics (e.g.,
Revenue / Sessionsfor revenue per session) - Name the metric and save it
Custom metrics are available in all future reports once created. Common examples:
- Revenue per visitor —
Revenue / Unique Visitors - Pages per session —
Page Views / Sessions - Engagement rate —
(Sessions with 2+ page views) / Sessions
Add dimensional breakdowns
Section titled “Add dimensional breakdowns”Dimensions control how your metrics are sliced. Without dimensions, a report shows a single aggregate number. With dimensions, you see that number broken down by meaningful categories.
Available dimensions
Section titled “Available dimensions”| Dimension | Breaks data down by |
|---|---|
| Page | Individual page URLs |
| Traffic source | Channel (organic, paid, social, direct, referral) |
| Device | Desktop, mobile, tablet |
| Browser | Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge |
| Geography | Country, region, or city |
| Date | Day, week, or month |
| Experiment | Experiment name and variation |
| Content group | Custom content categories you define |
Custom dimensions
Section titled “Custom dimensions”If the built-in dimensions do not match your segmentation needs, your development team can pass custom dimension values with analytics events. Once configured, custom dimensions appear alongside standard ones.
Common custom dimensions:
- Customer tier — Loyalty program level
- Login status — Logged in vs anonymous
- User role — Customer, prospect, partner, employee
- Content type — Blog, product page, support article, landing page
Combine dimensions
Section titled “Combine dimensions”You can add multiple dimensions to create cross-tabulations. For example:
- Traffic source + Device — See whether mobile visitors from social media behave differently than desktop visitors from search
- Experiment + Geography — Check whether an experiment winner holds across regions
- Content group + Date — Track how content category performance trends over time
Limit cross-tabulations to two or three dimensions. More than that produces tables with too many cells to interpret meaningfully.
Apply filters
Section titled “Apply filters”Filters narrow your report to a specific subset of data without removing dimensions.
Filter types
Section titled “Filter types”| Filter | Example |
|---|---|
| Date range | Last 30 days, this quarter, custom range |
| Page URL | Contains “/blog/” or equals a specific URL |
| Traffic source | Only organic search traffic |
| Device | Only mobile visitors |
| Segment | Visitors who completed a specific goal |
| Experiment | Only visitors in a specific experiment |
Combine filters
Section titled “Combine filters”Filters use AND logic by default. If you filter by Device = Mobile AND Traffic Source = Organic Search, the report shows only mobile visitors who arrived via organic search.
For OR logic, create a segment that combines conditions and filter by that segment instead.
Choose a visualization
Section titled “Choose a visualization”The report builder supports several visualization types. Choose based on what your data needs to communicate:
| Visualization | Best for |
|---|---|
| Table | Precise numbers, comparisons across many items |
| Line chart | Trends over time |
| Bar chart | Comparing values across categories |
| Stacked bar | Showing composition (e.g., traffic sources as parts of total) |
| Pie chart | Proportions of a whole (use sparingly — bar charts are usually clearer) |
| Funnel | Multi-step conversion flows |
Switch between visualizations without losing your metric and dimension selections. The data stays the same — only the presentation changes.
Save, share, and schedule
Section titled “Save, share, and schedule”Select Save Report and give it a descriptive name. Saved reports appear in your Reports library and can be pinned to dashboards.
Name reports by the question they answer, not by the metrics they contain. “Blog conversion by traffic source” is more useful than “Report 47” when you return to it months later.
Share reports with team members by selecting Share and choosing recipients. Recipients need Optimizely Analytics access to view shared reports. Permissions on the report match the recipient’s analytics access level — they cannot see data their role does not permit.
Schedule delivery
Section titled “Schedule delivery”For reports your team reviews regularly, set up scheduled delivery:
- Select Schedule on a saved report
- Choose frequency: daily, weekly, or monthly
- Select recipients (email addresses)
- Choose format: PDF summary or link to the live report
- Set the delivery time
Scheduled reports send automatically. Recipients get an email with either an attached PDF or a link that opens the current data in the report builder.
Troubleshooting
Section titled “Troubleshooting”| Issue | Cause | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| Report shows no data | Filter combination too restrictive | Widen filters, check date range |
| Metric values seem too low | Custom metric formula error | Review the formula in metric settings |
| Custom dimension not appearing | Developer has not deployed the tracking code | Confirm custom dimension events are firing in the browser’s network tab |
| Scheduled report not arriving | Recipient email blocked by spam filter | Check spam folder, add Optimizely to allow list |