About Flowscore

Frequently asked questions about the algorithm

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Written by Davy Laudet
Updated over a week ago

What is Flowscore?

Flowscore is an advanced statistical sorting algorithm for Flows. With Flowscore, we can make sure that the most engaging and relevant images are the ones that users see first.

How well does it work?

We did an extensive test during 2020 on 14 companies and 20 flows with a total of over 3 million users. You can read about the results here.

How does it work?

The Flowscore can be divided into two parts, that are based on:

  1. How new the image is. When an image is approved in Moderate, it receives a time bonus score. This score decreases exponentially with time. This means that it first decreases quickly, then more slowly. This will make sure that new, fresh images will be visible at the top of the Flow.

  2. a. The second part when the Flow has CTA-links: Click-through rate, but at the same time takes the amount of data into consideration. In this way, an image with 1 click and 2 views will score lower than another image that has 2 clicks and 4 views. With more data, we can be more certain how engaging an image is, and we reward that. This part of the Flowscore is inspired by https://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html

    b. The second part when the Flow has no CTA-links: Post positions. When the images are in random order, we noticed that the amount of clicks that images get are directly related to the post position. The first image gets the most clicks, by far, and the second image gets the second most, and so on. We use this to give each post position different weights in the score. If the second image gets half as many clicks as the first image, it means that 1 click on the first image is worth 2 clicks on the second image.

How long is an image considered new?

Let's say you update the Flow once every week. Then you might want the new images on top of the Flow for 3 days. But what if you've updated the flow every day? Then you would have today’s images first, then yesterday’s images, then the day before yesterday’s images. It’s after those images that you would actually have the other images sorted on CTR. That way the 'best' images would still be far down in the Flow - all the time. To prevent this, the time bonus part of Flowscore is dynamic. This means that the speed at which the Flowscore time score part decreases depends on how often you update your Flow. The more often you update, the faster it will decrease and vice versa. This is adjusted automatically.

Which Flows is the Flowscore calculated on?

The score of an image is based on all views and clicks in all Flows that it is present in.

What Flows does Flowscore improve the most?

Flowscore improves all Flows, but the increase in performance is the most for Flows with CTA-links. Flows with few visible images, carousels, see a significantly greater boost than Flows with multiple rows with visible images. We also see an increased effect when the quality of images differs more, which usually is the case with UGC.

Can we have pinned posts when using Flowscore?

Pinned posts will decrease the performance of the Flow. The more pinned posts, the less the effect of Flowscore. But sometimes performance is not everything – maybe you want to promote a special product or showcase a message.

Do all Flows need to be sorted on Flowscore?

No.

Will our company need to involve our IT-department or do anything to enable this?

No.

Will I have to change anything in how I approve images?

No.

Flowscore is based on your pricing plan. If you wish to add this feature, get in touch to discuss upgrade options.

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