Expand my Community achievements bar.

Visits incongruity between SiteCatalyst, Data Warehouse and Discover

Avatar

Level 3

3/22/10

Comparing the same Visits report using the SiteCatalyst interface or the Data Warehouse, tipically results in different numbers.
As known, it is due to Visits that took place very close to midnight (12PM): while SiteCatalyst attributes them to the day 1 (the day before the midnight), Data Warehouse attributes them both to day 1 and 2.
So if for example a Visit took place from 11.40PM untill 12.10PM, SiteCatalyst counts a Visit for day 1 while Data Warehouse counts a Visit for day 1 and a Visit for day 2.

Furthermore, a similar issue take place when comparing the same Visits report using the SiteCatalyst interface and Discover.

As known, it is due to the different ability of SiteCatalyst and Discover to recognise the users: while Discover is able to track visits with persistent cookies disabled, SiteCatalyst can not.
In this way, Discover tipically shows a higher amount of Visits than SiteCatalyst.

It would be nice and more user-friendly if the data (or the same report) wouldn't be different even if using different "tools".

4 Comments

Avatar

Level 1

3/22/10

Right!

I agree with you!

My customers do not accept that 3 tools into the Omniture Suite show different values for the same metric.

Avatar

Level 1

9/13/10

This idea is in progress and the visits metric will be the same across SiteCatalyst, Discover, and Data Warehouse.  Non-cookied visitors will now be counted in SiteCatalyst as well as being available in Discover.

Avatar

Employee

4/7/11

The upgraded platform available as part of SiteCatalyst 15 standardizes the logic behind these metrics across all three tools. Data Warehouse will have two Visits metrics: one that includes all visitors, and one that (as with historical DW data) includes only cookied visitors.