Question of the Month: Difference between Visit and Hit

[mattlukoff1]

Hello,

Could anyone explain the difference between creating Segments based on Visits versus Hits. I'm thinking that it has to do with the ability to report across instances (not Visits) but please confirm.

[brian_au · Accepted solution]

Hi Matt,

There is a good overview on the Adobe Analytics Help Microsite (linked below). Visits cast a wider net comprehensive for the entire Visitor web session whereas Hit based segments are based off occurrences of page or link requests.

Visitor Container

The Visitor container includes every visit and page view for visitors within a specified time frame. A segment at the Visitor level returns the page that meets the condition plus all other pages viewed by the visitor (and only constrained by defined date ranges). As the most broadly-defined container, reports generated at the Visitor container level will return page views across all visits and lets you generate a multi-visit analysis. Consequently, the Visitor container is the most susceptible to change based on defined date ranges.

Visitor containers can include values based on a visitor's overall history:

• Days Before First Purchase
• Original Entry Page
• Original Referring Domains

Visit Container

The Visit container lets you identify page interactions, campaigns, or conversions for a specific web session. The Visit container is the most commonly used container because it captures behaviors for the entire visit session once the rule is met and lets you define which visits you want to include or exclude in building and applying a segment. It can help you answer the question of how many visitors viewed the News and Sports section in the same visit? Or pages that attributed to a successful conversion to a sale?

Visit containers include values based on occurrence per visit:

• Visit Number
• Entry Page
• Return Frequency
• Participation Metrics
• Linearly allocated metrics

Hit Container

The Hit container defines which page hits you would like to include or exclude from a segment. It is the most narrow of the containers available to let you identify specific clicks and page view where a condition is true, letting you view a single tracking code, or isolate behavior within a particular section of your site. You may also want to pinpoint a specific value when an action occurs, such as the marketing channel when an order was placed.

Hit containers include values based single page breakdowns:

• Products
• List Props
• List eVars
• Merchandising eVars (in context of events)

Reference Help Link:

http://microsite.omniture.com/t2/help/en_US/analytics/segment/seg_container_overview.html

Best,

Brian

[mattlukoff1]

this is very helpful, thank you Brian!

[TanmayMathur]

Hi Matt & Brian,

As this thread has been the most viewed in the last quarter I am pinning it for the ease of community members. Thanks for asking the question in the community, it is helping a lot of users. :)

Tanmay

[blakef15876924]

Hi folks. Here's the correct documentation URL for segment containers. The microsite content is obsolete and should redirect to the latest information. 

https://marketing.adobe.com/resources/help/en_US/analytics/segment/seg_container_overview.html

Thanks

[799008]

Didn't see anything there Blake

[soumitram936019]

can you share the latest link even this one is not working

[teknopointindia]

Hi Matt, 

I wrote this article on Simplified Approach to Planning Segments in Adobe Analytics 

Hope this helps you to have more clarity of how to think about the Visitors, Visit and Hit as a Scope  and as constraint when used with containers. 

Regards, 

Mody