---
title: Leveraging Analytics
description: "**Requires Preferred license.** Collecting analytics data is only valuable if you use it to make better decisions. This guide shows how to interpret PetMatchPro event data and use it to increase adoptions. ## Understanding Search Behavior ### What Are Visitors…"
url: "https://petmatchpro.com/docs/leveraging-analytics/"
updated: "2026-10-24"
category: "Analytics & Tracking"
---

# Leveraging Analytics

**Requires Preferred license.**

Collecting analytics data is only valuable if you use it to make better decisions. This guide shows how to interpret PetMatchPro event data and use it to increase adoptions.

## Understanding Search Behavior

### What Are Visitors Looking For?

Impression data tells you which animals visitors see most often. Combined with filter usage, you can learn:

- **Popular species** - Are visitors primarily searching for dogs, cats, or other animals?
- **Popular breeds** - Which breeds attract the most searches?
- **Filter usage** - Which filters are visitors using most? This tells you what matters to them.
- **Search position** - Animals higher in search results get more views. Consider adjusting your sort order to feature animals that need homes most.

## Interpreting Position Impact

The "Position Impact" insight in the analytics dashboard answers a specific question: *does an animal's position in the search results affect how often visitors click into it?* This section explains how position is recorded, how the 8.7.0 dwell-gated impression model changes the data, and what you can do with the signal.

### How Position Is Recorded

When an impression or detail-view event fires, PetMatchPro captures the card's **position within the visible (post-filter) result set**, 1-based:

- Position 1 is the first card the visitor sees after any active filters or sort.
- If the visitor applies a species filter that hides 80% of the cards, position 1 is the first remaining card.
- If the visitor uses pagination, position resets within each page (position 1 on page 2 is the first card on page 2).

This means "position 3" always means "third in the deck the visitor was looking at", not "third overall in the database".

### What Changed in 8.7.0

Before 8.7.0, every animal card rendered to the page counted as an impression - including positions 200, 300, and 362 on a long results page where the visitor never scrolled past position 8.

After 8.7.0:

- Only cards the visitor actually saw (with at least 50% in the viewport for at least 500ms) count as impressions.
- On a 362-card "all available dogs" page, a typical session generates 8-20 impressions instead of 362.
- Position-impact data becomes *much* more meaningful: a high impression count at position 5 now means "5 visitors actually scrolled to position 5", not "5 visitors loaded the page that happened to have a card there".

### Reading the Data

The Insights accordion shows position impact in two ways:

#### Position-by-position impression counts

How many times each position was viewed. Expected pattern: a steep drop-off after the first row or two. Most visitors do not scroll past the fold.

#### Click-through rate by position

For each position, the percentage of impressions that converted into a detail view. This is the more actionable metric: a high CTR at position 1 is unsurprising, but if position 6 has a higher CTR than position 3, the cards at position 6 are doing something right (better photo, more compelling name, etc.) and worth studying.

### Comparing Pre-8.7.0 and Post-8.7.0 Data

Direct numeric comparisons across the upgrade boundary are misleading. A few rules of thumb:

- **Total impression counts will drop dramatically** after the upgrade. This is correct - you are now measuring real visibility instead of page renders. Use percentages and ratios, not raw totals, when comparing periods that span the upgrade.
- **Search CTR will increase** because the denominator (impressions) is now smaller and more accurate. Again, this is the truer signal.
- **Position-impact data before 8.7.0 was always noisy** at high positions. Treat pre-upgrade data for positions past about 20 as approximate at best.

If you have weekly or monthly reports that span the upgrade boundary, consider adding a footnote explaining the methodology change.

### Actionable Uses for Position Data

Position data is most useful for these decisions:

- **Sort field tuning.** If an animal you expect to perform well is consistently ranked at position 50+, your sort field is hiding it. Try a different default sort (e.g., date entered ascending instead of descending).
- **Featured-animal placement.** Animals you manually feature should appear in positions 1-6. If they do not, check your `[pmp-search]` shortcode parameters.
- **Pagination cadence.** If almost no impressions register past the first page, your "results per page" setting is too low - visitors are not paginating. Consider showing more cards per page.
- **Card-design A/B testing.** When you change card photo or name handling, watch the position-CTR curve. A change that lifts CTR at position 5 by more than at position 1 is interesting (the change made deeper-positioned cards more clickable).

### Position Caveats

- Position is captured at the moment the impression fires. If a visitor applies a filter and the same animal moves from position 12 to position 4, only the position at first sighting is recorded - re-entry does not re-fire.
- On carousel templates, "position" reflects DOM order, which usually matches the rendered card order but can diverge if a custom CSS order is applied.
- Detail views captured before the matching impression (rare, e.g., direct deep-link entries) do not contribute position data.

## Understanding Detail Page Engagement

### Which Animals Get the Most Attention?

Detail view events show which animals visitors click on to learn more. Compare this with impression data to calculate a click-through rate:

- **High impressions, low clicks** - The animal is seen but not interesting enough to click. Consider improving the photo or search card details.
- **Low impressions, high clicks** - The animal is appealing when seen. Consider moving it higher in sort order so more visitors see it.

### How Are Visitors Arriving?

The **source** field in detail view events tells you how visitors reached the detail page:

| Source | What It Means | Action |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **search** | Clicked from search results | Your search page is working - visitors are browsing and engaging |
| **similar** | Clicked from "similar animals" section | Similar animals feature is driving additional engagement |
| **direct** | Visited via bookmark or typed URL | Visitors are returning to check on specific animals |
| **social** | Came from a social media share | Social sharing is generating traffic - encourage more sharing |
| **external** | Referred from another website | External sites are linking to your animals |

## Understanding Action Engagement

Action click events are the most important metric - they represent visitors taking steps toward adoption. PetMatchPro splits action types into two groups:

### Conversion Actions

These eight action types represent **adoption-relevant intent** and are what the Conversion Funnel, Conversions by Traffic Source, and Returning Visitor Conversion widgets count. The Returning Visitor widget compares conversion for returning versus first-time visitors; by default that is a same-day estimate, and it becomes a true cross-day comparison once you enable **Track Returning Visitors (cross-day)** and enough history accumulates:

| Action Type | What It Means |
| --- | --- |
| **adoption_app** | Visitor started an adoption application - your strongest conversion signal |
| **foster_app** | Visitor applied to foster |
| **email** | Visitor emailed about an animal |
| **phone** | Visitor called about an animal |
| **meet_greet** | Visitor scheduled a meet and greet |
| **donation** | Visitor clicked to donate |
| **sponsor** | Visitor sponsored an animal |
| **volunteer** | Visitor signed up to volunteer |

### Engagement Actions

These four action types are **useful signals of interest but are not conversions** - they appear in the Action Breakdown widget but are excluded from conversion-rate metrics so the conversion narrative is not inflated:

| Action Type | What It Means |
| --- | --- |
| **video_play** | Visitor watched an animal's video - engagement, not adoption commitment |
| **directions** | Visitor looked up directions - could be planning a visit or just curiosity |
| **share** | Visitor shared the listing on social media - amplifies reach but not a personal commitment |
| **poster** | Visitor printed a flyer - common for lost/found use cases, not adoption |

## Practical Optimization Ideas

### Improve Search Results

- If a species is searched frequently but has low click-through, improve photos for that species
- Enable overlays and icons to give visitors more information at a glance
- Adjust the fields shown in search results to include the details visitors care about most

### Improve Detail Pages

- If visitors view details but rarely take action, add more compelling descriptions and better photos
- Enable the "similar animals" template to keep visitors engaged
- Make action buttons (adoption application, email, phone) prominent and easy to find

### Boost Social Sharing

- If share events are low, enable social sharing and make sure the social buttons are visible
- Track which platforms generate the most return traffic

### Use Print Posters

- If poster print events are significant, your facility staff or volunteers are actively promoting animals - keep the feature enabled

## Next Steps

- [Understanding PMP Analytics](/docs/understanding-pmp-analytics/) - What events are tracked and what each metric means
- [Queue Health and Tools](/docs/queue-health-and-tools/) - Operational diagnostics for the analytics pipeline
- [Privacy and Data Retention](/docs/privacy-and-data-retention/) - What is stored alongside position data
- [GA4 Configuration](/docs/ga4-configuration/) - Set up analytics reporting

 Leveraging Analytics ultima modifica:  2026-03-25T19:25:16-04:00 da PetMatchPro