Core concepts

Below you'll find a list of core concepts that are used throughout Spectacle. Familiarizing yourself with these concepts will help you understand how Spectacle works and how to use it.

A

Attributed …

A prefix for model-weighted figures: attributed revenue, attributed deals, attributed leads. The value is split across the touchpoints of a journey, so fractions are normal.

Attribution model

How a journey's credit is divided between its touchpoints: first touch, last touch, linear or U-shaped.

Audience

A saved segment of contacts or companies. Can be synced to your ad networks.

Audience sync

Sends an audience to an ad network.

B

Became a lead

The date a visitor became a lead. Available as a column and filter on the audience lists.

C

Cohort

A group defined by when it started, then followed forwards. Audience insights uses the first-seen cohort: everyone whose first touchpoint fell in the period.

Company

An organization that contacts belong to. Companies come from your CRM, from the tracking SDK's group call, or from Lens.

Contact

Any visitor whose identity you know — through an identification, a lead form, or a CRM sync.

Conversion

An ad network's unit of a valuable action.

Spectacle only uses this word when talking to ad networks: conversion syncs going out, reported conversions coming back. Spectacle's own milestones are never called conversions.

Conversion sync

Sends won deals, stage changes or transactions to an ad network as conversions.

Customer

Any contact or company with at least one transaction.

Cut-off event

One or more events that mark a visitor becoming a lead, and the end of their journey. Only touchpoints up to the cut-off receive credit.

Spectacle suggests using the first moment a visitor provides their contact details, as from that point onwards you can use other channels (e.g. email marketing or phone) to try and convert the customer to a paying customer. Typical cut-off events include: white paper download, demo booked, lead form fill, trial sign-up, freemium sign-up or even newsletter sign-up.

If no cut-off event is configured and a CRM has been connected, Spectacle will take the earliest deal creation time for the visitor.

D

Deal

A sales opportunity synced from your connected CRM, including its amount, stage and status. Deals are matched to contacts and their journeys.

E

Event

You can track any significant event for your visitors in Spectacle. Spectacle suggests tracking at least every step in your conversion funnel. A simple funnel might look like this:

Customer Created → Trial Started → Subsciption Started → Customer Charged

Some of these events are automatically tracked when connecting some of Spectacle's integrations. E.g. when connecting Stripe, a "Payment Intent Succeeded" event is automatically tracked, including the revenue and currency properties.

Events from integrations keep the source system's own words, so "Pipedrive: Lead Created" means Pipedrive's lead, not Spectacle's.

F

First seen

The date of a visitor's earliest touchpoint. Available as a column and filter on the audience lists.

First source

The classified source of a visitor's earliest visit, such as google_ads or direct. A visitor with no visit has no first source.

I

Identification

As soon as a visitor provides you with their contact details, you can identify the visitor. Identifying a visitor early and often helps Spectacle build an as complete as possible picture of the journey, and merges their devices into one visitor.

Influence

Shows that a channel touched a journey, without dividing credit. Influence numbers overlap between channels, so they should not be added together.

J

Journey

Every visit of a visitor up to the first configured cut-off event. Any revenue for a customer will be attributed to the journey's visits only.

L

Lead

Any visitor that triggers a cut-off event. If no cut-off event is configured and a CRM has been connected, Spectacle will take the earliest deal creation time for the visitor.

Lens

Recognises the company behind an anonymous visitor.

N

New …

A prefix for plain counts, each by its own date: new visitors (first touchpoint in the period), new contacts (identified in the period), new leads (became a lead in the period), new customers (first transaction in the period).

O

Organization

The billing and team container that owns your workspaces.

P

Pipeline

The summed amount of deals. Open pipeline counts open deals only.

R

Reported …

A prefix for numbers an ad network measured about itself: reported conversions, reported clicks, reported impressions. Spectacle's own figures never carry the prefix.

Revenue

The summed amount of transactions. Also the section of the app holding your deals, transactions and conversion syncs.

S

Spend

What an ad network charged, by campaign, ad group, ad or keyword.

T

Touchpoint

Any interaction by a visitor with your brand. Current touchpoint types:

Page (any page view)
Lead form engagement (a form submitted through an integration such as Typeform or LinkedIn lead gen)
Ad engagement (an interaction recorded by an ad network)

Transaction

A single revenue event, such as a payment or an invoice. Transactions come from a connected payment provider (e.g. Stripe), your CRM, or revenue tracked as part of an event. The revenue of a transaction is attributed to the journey.

V

Visit

Some touchpoints are considered a visit. This is when any of the following conditions is true:

A visitor has their first touchpoint
A visitor has a touchpoint more than 30 minutes after their previous touchpoint
A visitor came in through a different utm_campaign or utm_id than their previous touchpoint

Only page touchpoints become visits.

Visitor

Anyone who creates a touchpoint. Counted per person, not per browser: two devices belonging to one identified visitor count once.

W

Workspace

A workspace is a container for your data. You can have multiple workspaces for different projects, websites or businesses. Each workspace has its own data and settings.

You can create a workspace in the Spectacle Dashboard.