Filter Visits with Hit or Visit based segment

Question

Hi everyone, could someone explain to me the difference of the following:

Let's say, I have a Prop which stands for an event action, e.g. load of an application on a page. And I want to know the visits that included the load of that application. What I do, is drag 'Visits' into my metrics column of the free form table and then create a segment with Hit scope and the propX equals 'load of that application'. I get 15,000 Visits.

I wanted to also create a fallout visualization and when I set the scope 'visit' for the Fallout and drag the propX with the value 'load of that application', I get 17,000. I then created a segment from that touchpoint to compare this with the freeform table and noticed that instead of a hit based segment like above in the free form, this is a visit based segment. The segment with the 17K includes the same amount of propX values for that application load I segmented on, but when I drag the propX dimension into the rows, I can see, there are also visits for other values of that prop.

I struggle to understand the logical difference though. I would read the hit based segment with the metric 'Visits' as:
How many Visits did I have where propX equaled 'load of that application'? But what is the meaning of the Visits metric filtered by the Visit based segment? And which version is correct?

Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted Answer

So, the "fallout table", is about showing sequential progression between touchpoints. The scope of a fallout is about are you looking at the sequence within a visit, or for the visitor.

i.e.

Visit 1:

Page A
Page B
Page C

Visit 2:

Page A
Page B
Page D
Page A
Page B
Page A

Visit 3:

Page A

Visit 4:

Page B

If I look at a VISIT fallout for "Page A" then "Page B", I will see:

Page A - 3
Page B - 3

(these account for the first 2 visits, and twice in visit 2, but do not include visits 3 and 4)

If I look at VISITOR fallout for "Page A" then "Page B", I will see:

Page A - 4
Page B - 4

(this includes the original first 2 visits, with the double sequence in visit 2, and now it includes the progression between Visit 3 and 4 - Page A in visit 3 and Page B is visit 4)

If I look at VISIT for "Page C" then "Page D", I will get:

nothing

(because Page C and Page D never exist in the same visit)

But, if I look at that same sequence at the Visitor level, I will get:

Page C - 1
Page D - 1

(again because this is flowing across multiple visits)

Creating a "segment from touchpoint" is only good when you are trying to replicate the sequence... it's pulling back all the hits for the page that occurred in that sequence...

So your segment, "hits that equal Page A" paired with the Visit metric; will see Visit 1, Visit 2 and Visit 3 - and count 3 visits.

Creating a segment from touchpoint doesn't try to restrict the value being returned to just "Page A"... it only cares that Page A existed in the context of the sequence...

You are looking at completely different scopes and completely different uses.

If you just want to know that number of Visits that had "propA = X", then your segment is correct.

If you are trying to get information about a sequence of events, then building a segment from a fallout will help you do that... but if you don't need sequence logic, then this is just going to cause unnecessary confusion, and not pull back what you need.

Jennifer_Dungan · Answer

You might want to read an article I wrote about complex segment scope: https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/perspectives/the-magic-behind-the-curtain-complex-segments

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