What is the Activity Map?

The Activity Map is a real-time visualization of traffic, conversion and pathing data for individual page elements (buttons, banners, advertisements and hot-spots) directly on websites or digital properties. It enables marketers and business users to fine-tune these pages by providing actionable insights into what’s working, what isn’t, and how to improve their performance.

The concept behind an activity map is based on Michael Porter’s activity-system mapping (ASM) framework, which describes how core competencies of an organization interlock with and reinforce each other. Rather than listing the various activities and policies that an organization does, Porter suggests organizing them into clusters that support each other to provide strategic advantage.

A key to understanding the value of an activity map is how it relates to an organization’s differentiation strategy. Differentiation involves determining what your company does that customers value, and then matching it with the needs of your target audience. As a result, you can focus your resources on those things that are of greatest value to your audience.

In a typical ASM, you start by creating a set of tasks — each with a primary metric and the goal of driving customers toward an outcome. Then, you add events that trigger the task, and then connect the tasks together with paths that guide customers along the desired journey. For example, a retail store might create an activity with the objective of increasing web sales through a special discount offer. To drive customers to the website, the store might send an email thanking the customer for a recent purchase and include a link to a web offer. The store might then connect the email and web offers with a single pathway that ends in a conversion event, such as an online purchase.

Using the DOM Attribute Capture data element, you can configure an activity map to capture data for different page regions based on a specific attribute or multiple attributes. To apply this configuration, add the data element to a tag that tracks Adobe Analytics page views and use the Set Configuration action. By setting this configuration as a page view rule, the custom ASM settings will be applied to any interactions that occur on the selected page.

In a task, click Continue from conversion to enable customers to continue through The Activity Map only when the primary metric of the preceding task is met. Alternatively, you can select Split to insert paths that allow different actions to be taken for customers who do not meet the primary metric of the previous task. For example, the second path after a task that makes an offer to new customers might be to email them another discount offer. Similarly, the third path after the first task could be to make an offer in-store. You can also delete an entire path by selecting it and clicking Remove path.