The Scenario Analysis reporting feature lets you define a series of steps a visitor must take in order to complete a transaction, such as a sale or form completion. By defining a scenario analysis, you can learn where visitors abandon a process and identify areas of weakness in your site. Using this information, you can make changes to your site to help improve visitor retention and conversions.

1. In the Yahoo! Web Analytics reporting interface, click the "Settings" link at the top of the page.
2. On the Settings page, locate the Scenario Analysis section (Figure 1). Click the "Define and troubleshoot a series of steps toward a sale or defined action" link.
   
   
   Figure 1. Locate the Scenario Analysis section on the Settings page.
   
   
3. On the Scenario Analysis page, click the "Add new scenario" button.
4. Enter a name for your scenario in the Scenario Name field. If you wish, you may also include a description of the scenario in the Description field. Once finished, click the "Add" button.
5. Next, set up each step of your scenario. For example, if you were tracking each step of your checkout process, and you were using a single-page checkout flow that includes an order review step, your scenario steps would be:
   
   Step 1 – Combined Shipping/Billing page
   Step 2 – Order Review page
   Step 3 – Order Confirmation page
   
   To begin adding a step to your scenario, enter a name for the step in the "Name of Scenario Step" field (Figure 2).
   
   
   Figure 2. Add a name for the scenario step.
   
   
6. Next, select a parameter that can be used to uniquely track this step. The recommended parameter for Checkout Manager pages is "URL contains".
7. Enter a value unique to the page URL in the "Value" field. In the case of a combined Shipping and Billing page, the unique value is ysco.one-page (Figure 3). For all page values, please see the table below.
   
   
   Figure 3. Enter a campaign tracking parameter.
   
   
8. Click the "Add new step" button. Your changes will be saved.
9. Continue adding the second and third steps, using the URL contains tracking parameter for each step, and the following values:
   
   Order Review step - ysco.review
   Order Confirmation step - ysco.confirm
   
   
10. When you've added your final step, click the "Update" button.

Page values by checkout flow

Ad-Hoc Scenarios

Ad-hoc scenarios allow you to research past visitor behavior or to test possible scenario steps before configuring a pre-defined scenario.

To configure an ad-hoc scenario:

1. In the Yahoo! Web Analytics reporting interface, expand the Navigation section of the Reports menu. Click on "Scenario Analysis," and choose "Ad-Hoc Scenario."
2. On the Ad-Hoc Scenario page, follow steps 5 to 8 for setting up a scenario analysis, listed above.
3. When you've finished adding steps, click the "Show Report" button.

Viewing a Scenario Analysis

Once you've created a scenario analysis, you can access it through the Reports menu.

1. In the Yahoo! Web Analytics reporting interface, expand the Navigation section of the Reports menu. Click on "Scenario Analysis," and choose "Pre-defined scenario."
2. Each Scenario Analysis you've created will be shown in the report (Figure 4). To view details of a step, use the drill-down function (Figure 5).
   
   
   Figure 4. Scenario analysis report.
   
   
   Figure 5. Use the drill-down feature to view details of a step.
   
   
3. Choose "Show Abandonment Path by title" or "Show Abandonment Path" to see abandonment path details for your scenario.