Time Segments & Derived Metrics

[#1]

It has always been a challenge for me to compare metrics over time in an efficient manner.  For example, MoM, YoY, WoW,  etc.  I am typically relegated to multiple dashboard widgets or ugly looking reports.

I love the ability in Ad Hoc Analysis to create 'Derived Metrics' and am excited for this capability to come to Reports & Analytics.   It would be really nice to be able to create segments and derived metrics based on dynamic time values.

For example.  If I am looking at last months visits (a complete month), I might want to compare MoM or YoY Metrics in table.  It would be nice to create the following Derived Metric

Name: YoY  Visits %

Calculated Metric: (Visits (previous month) - Visits (current month)) / Visits (current month)

Type: %

The trick here is that the segment for previous month would update based on the date selected in the report.  You could obviously do prior week, prior 30 days, etc.

Michael

[#2]

I would also love to see something like this. A lot of analytics tools are based on event-time metrics and the ability to do this would certainly help subscription based businesses with recurring KPIs. As an example, I'd like to be able to look at the ratio of event2 today divided by event1 from four weeks ago (this looks like it could be acheived based on the example you have above). Would certainly put Adobe well ahead of Google Analytics

[#3]

As for the January Release you can now use date ranges in segments including rolling date ranges. This should let you do what you are looking for. Just create a segment for previous month or previous year and add it to the derived metric.

Also as a shortcut in Analysis Workspace you right click on any metric column and add a time comparison column. This will let you do the same thing as well.

This doesn't totally solve your use case becuase it isn't based of off the report date but it is based off of the current date but it is close.