How is cart addition calculated?

[aagk123]

How is cart addition calculated? Adobe document says "The ‘Cart additions’ metric shows the number of times a visitor added something to their cart. " 

But if you look at this report there is an order without cart addition when I breakdown with order id (order id gets generated after successful purchase at the last page). How can a user buy a product without adding it to a cart? Is it because the order id variable gets values only at the last page and because of which it is not getting tied back to product cart addition?

FYI when I remove order ID i can see cart addition to almost all products.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I don't think that's how this works... If your Order ID is generated on the purchase event, it wouldn't correlate to an "Add to Cart" Action. Your individual products would correlate... 

So think of it this way:

I have Product X and Product Y

When you add Product X to your cart, the "Cart Addition" is triggered (in your products notation, you would have Product X, and maybe some merchadising eVars about that product, etc)

Then you add Product Y to your cart... same thing.. you trigger a cart addition with all the related information that pertains to it.

Maybe later you view the cart, at this time, you would trigger a "cart view", and both products in your cart would get the view.

Maybe you view the cart again later, another cart view.

Then you finally purchase, and the Order ID is sent along with both products and all your relative data.

If you look at Product X, and have columns for Cart Additions, Cart Views and Orders

You should see Cart Additions as 1, Views as 2 and Orders as 1... but the Order ID isn't stitched to either the Cart Addition or the Views.. it was only part of the Orders call.

Forgive me for my ignorance here, but I am not sure why you want to correlate the Order ID to your Cart Additions metric.... to your Product, yes; your product is the object that is constant at all stages of this flow... but your Order ID is very specific to your purchase event...

That said, you could try changing the attribution model on your Cart Additions:

[Alexis_Cazes_ · Accepted solution]

Perfect answer.

Events are only allocated to an eVar is it is sent in the same server call as the event or is being persisted.

Order ID should ever be generated when the purchase is completed and should never exist during checkout process or cart process, therefore it is normal that any events that were sent prior the order id was generated and sent will not be attributed to it.