A4T & Unspecified activity conversions

Question

We are investigating an issue related to Unspecified values and are trying to determine whether we're encountering a configuration issue, a data collection issue, or a platform limitation.

In the example below, some conversions are successfully attributed to the menu-details dimension using Link Position, while 68 other conversions appear as Unspecified and cannot be tied back to a dimension.

Why would some conversions be attributable to a dimension such as Link Position or Link Name, while others remain Unspecified? Is it reasonable to expect that most click-tracking conversions should be definable and reportable against a link dimension, or are there scenarios where Unspecified is the expected behavior?

More specifically, can Target users define click-tracking conversion metrics using link-level dimensions such as Link Position and/or Link Name, and are there any known limitations that would prevent these dimensions from being available for certain conversions?

Arturo-Rivero · Answer

Hi ​@TimBo4,I believe this probably isn't a data loss problem. Unspecified just means nothing was set on the hit that carried the conversion, so the real question is which hit was that.A couple of things I'd look at first.Your Link Position is a custom eVar (v6) rather than a built-in link dimension, so it will behavehowever you configured it. I would recommend checking its allocation and expiration in Report Suite Manager, under Conversion Variables. If it expires on Hit, it can only attribute a conversion that happens on the same hit as the click, and everything else drops into Unspecified. This behavior would then be expected.Next, I'd try to work out whether those 68 conversions touched a link at all. Break the same Target Experiences row down by the standard Custom Link dimension. Link hits will populate it, either with the link name or the URL if no name was passed, and page views don't.If Custom Link comes back blank for those 68 too, then this means that these conversions weren't clicks. Your goal metric is firing on a page view, so no link dimension can describe them and there's nothing broken to chase. If Custom Link does have values while Link Position doesn't, the hits are there and your eVar isn't riding along with them. I'd check that eVar6 is in s.linkTrackVars, and that the beacon isn't getting killed by the navigation (s.useBeacon = true, or Web SDK).On your other questions. I wouldn't expect click conversions to carry a link dimension unless the conversion event fires on the same s.tl() call that sets it. And unfortunately Target can't build a click metric out of an Analytics dimension. Target click metrics are element-based, defined by selecting the element in the Visual Experience Composer. With A4T you pick an Analytics metric as your goal, but you can't make a metric from a dimension. If link position attribution is what you're after, the cleaner route is to fire your own event on the same tl() call as eVar6 and use that as the goal metric.Happy to go deeper if you can share how the goal metric is configured, since that's what decides which of the two branches above you're in.Looking forward to hearing back!

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