The Executive KPI Report

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Accessing the KPI Report
• Configuration 
• Widgets
• Interactive Demo

Overview

The Executive KPI Report provides a site wide overview of key performance metrics and how they changed day by day, or week over week. You can create one or more of these reports for your site(s), and you can customize the report in a variety of ways to fit your needs.

Here's a look at an example report showing a weekly report interval, looking back 10 weeks, showing Time to Interactive as the highlighted metric for the 75th percentile. In the following sections of this article, we'll break down each widget and explain the data you're looking at.

Accessing the KPI Report

This report is accessible through the left side navigation menu under 'Executive Reports'.

Configuration 

The first step in configuring one of these reports is the General section. Here you can specify the name of the report, the Report Interval, Lookback Period, and the Start of Week. The Focus Date below reflects the most recent complete report interval (the most recent complete week, or the most recent day). You'll notice this will change based on the report interval and the configured Start of Week.

On the second configuration page, Metrics & Widgets, you're able to choose the metrics you want included (up to 6) and the customizable thresholds for those metrics as they will appear in the report: 'Good' appears green if the measured value is less than or equal to the 'Good' threshold, 'Needs Improvement' appears yellow if the measured value is greater than the 'Good' threshold and less than or equal to the 'Needs Improvement' threshold, and any value higher than those ranges will be color-coded red. 

The 'Highlighted Metric' refers to the metric that is featured for the 'Traffic Distribution' graph, the 'Top X Pages' graph, the 'Custom Pages' graph, the 'Aggregate Trend' graph, and the top 'Highlighted Metric' widget. 

The Top X Pages Widget is a selection which allows you to choose how many of the top pages (by page views) should appear in that widget. Next, the Custom Pages Widget is a selection which allows you to choose a pre-configured performance path, where the pages in that path will be the pages that make up the widget. If you haven't created a Performance Path before, there's a link right next to the drop-down where you can go to create a new one.

The third configuration page, Filters, allows you to choose the filters for the report. Each of the filter categories expands to allow you to access all filtering options.

To complete the configuration and generate the report, click Save Configuration in the lower right and your report will be created.

Widgets

Now, let's discuss each of the widgets that make up this report.

Highlighted Metric:

'Highlighted Metric' is a customizable widget that features the metric that was selected in the configuration; in this example, we have chosen to display Time to Interactive (TTI).

To the left, you can see the average performance for the focus date, one week prior to the focus date, and the average for the entire lookback period. As you can see in this example, the numbers are showing the 75th percentile. Also note the shading of green, yellow, and red is based on the configured thresholds for that metric. 

To the right, you can see a traffic distribution over the focus date. This shows the percentage of total page views experiencing a TTI within each performance bucket - good, needs improvement and poor.

Metric Definitions: 

The Metric Definitions widget shows the definitions for each of the selected metrics, along with the configured thresholds for each metric. Note, for Account Admin level users, these definitions can be modified by clicking the pencil icon to the right of the definition. Here you can emphasize the significance of a particular metric or modify the definition to be most easily understood by executives consuming the report.

Top Cards:

The Top Cards widget displays the same information from the Highlighted Metric widget, but for each of the selected metrics. These are the metrics you chose in the Metrics and Widgets section of the report configuration.

Rollup Table: 

The Rollup Table shows a tabular view of each performance metric and how the performance of the focus date compares to the week/day prior and the entire lookback period. For each metric you'll see the performance for the focus date, the week prior along with the percent change and absolute change from the focus date, and the performance for the entire lookback period as well as the percent change and absolute change compared to the focus date. Also, note the legend - if the percent change is greater than 15% better or 15% worse, the number will be colored green or red, respectively.

Metric Trends:

The Metric Trends graph shows performance over time for the selected metrics, specifically those that are typically measured in seconds. The data will be grouped by week or day, depending on the configured report interval. You can also click each of the legend items (including Page Views) to show or hide that metric in the graph. 

Metric Score and Trends: 

The Metric Score and Trends widget shows the same information as the widget above, the Metric Trends graph, except this graph shows only the metrics that are typically measured in milliseconds, as well as metrics that are scores (e.g. Cumulative Layout Shift).

Top X Pages: 

The Top X Pages widget shows a daily/weekly bar chart trend of performance for the highlighted metric, for the top x number of pages (as set in the report configuration). Each bar shows a stacked view of the pages and to the right includes the total average performance for the given day/week. Hovering over each section of the bar shows the average performance for that page, as well as the number of page views making up that number. Lastly, to the very right you can see the site wide conversion rate for that day/week, which can be hidden with the checkbox above.

Custom Pages: 

The Custom Pages widget shows the same information as the Top X Pages widget, the only difference being the displayed pages. For this widget, you must choose one of your pre-configured Real User Performance Paths (if you haven't configured one of these, there's a link to configure a new one in the report config), and those pages will be the ones making up the graph.

Traffic Distribution: 

The Traffic Distribution widget shows what percentage of page views experienced a page speed within each threshold bucket (good, needs improvement and poor). This is based on the performance of the highlighted metric. The graph shows daily/weekly bars to give you an idea of how things are trending at a quick glance.  

Aggregate Trend:

Lastly, the Aggregate Trend widget shows the average (or 75th percentile in this case) performance over time by day/week. Hovering over the bar also shows how many hits (page views) make up the given number. As you can see in the legend, the coloring of the bars is based on the configured thresholds set in the report configuration.

Interactive Demo: