How to rectify this gap: Total visits to page - visits by marketing channel - typed/book

[asdf12341z]

Hello,

So I'm reporting for a campaign in which I have a critical point in the user journey funnel for which I want to see the breakdown of people by marketing channels and typed/bookmarked arrivals. From my understanding, the sum of these two figures should equal the total visits to this page, but I am seeing a gap.

Below we can see the gap: 

13,002 - 6,979 - 5,769= 254 visits unaccounted for.

The definitions of the validation landing page segment (1), organic segment (2) and validation landing page for typed/bookmarked (3) are as follows:

Am I doing something wrong here? Is there any reason as to why we would see a gap here?

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

First off, I want to address the fundamental issue of how you are using "VISIT" segments.

A segment like:

VISIT [

    clause 1

    AND

   clause 2

   AND

   clause 3

   etc....

]

Will return ALL page views, from all visits that have those clauses anywhere in the visit, but not necessarily on the same hit....

Clause 1 could match on the first hit, and Clause 2 could match the second, etc...  This means you are looking at a combination of items that are beyond the page your are trying to target.

Also, for your purposes, I would actually use a HIT based segment, and pair that segment with Visits. This way your segment criteria will look at all the clauses on the same hit.

You could also add a HIT based container inside your Visit segment to constrain the logic to your needs, but for what you are doing you don't seem to need to make things that complex.

Next, when you break down by Segments  in your freeform table (first image, table 2), the Visits are no longer de-duplicated... therefore Visits that match multiple segments will both show on the Segment Row, and be counted multiple times in your total. This is where the difference is coming from... table 2 is inflated.

Note, your visit can have multiple Marketing Channels, and since your segment isn't being limited to the specific page and Channel, you are getting more data than expected.

Also, since Marketing Channels have a default 30 day attribution, if you are trying to identify the specific "entry" from the Marketing Channel, you should be looking at the Instance of the Channel and not just the value.

Here is an example:

[asdf12341z]

Thanks for your response Jennifer.

When you say:

---

@Jennifer_Dungan wrote:

Also, for your purposes, I would actually use a HIT based segment, and pair that segment with Visits. This way your segment criteria will look at all the clauses on the same hit.

You could also add a HIT based container inside your Visit segment to constrain the logic to your needs, but for what you are doing you don't seem to need to make things that complex.

I think I understand what you mean in the second paragraph, but how does that differ from the first?

In the second instance you are saying that I have a segment at the Visit level, but a HIT container inside it with my conditions, correct?

In the first paragraph how do I pair a HIT segment with visits? Or do you simply mean using a visits metric?

I am also curious what you mean by not over-complicating things in that second paragraph, isn't it quite simple as it's just 1 HIT container within the visits segment? So overall the logic remains the same, but it's just that it is all in one HIT-based container?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Hi, I am working on additional articles to this one, and while this focuses more on advanced functions, it does touch on segment scope.

The Scope of a segment has nothing to do with the metric that you pair it with, and yes, I was talking about pairing a Hit based segment with the Visits metric.

Let's look at the following criteria:

• Page equals A
• Logged In equals true

Visit 1

• (Hit 1) Page A / Not Logged In
• (Hit 2) Page B / Logged In

Visit 2

• (Hit 3) Page A / Logged In
• (Hit 4) Page C / Logged In

Visit 3

• (Hit 5) Page D / Logged In

A Hit based segment returns the matching hit. 

HIT [

    Page equals A

    AND

    Logged In equals true

]

This will match Hit 3, and return the data on Hit 3.... If you pair this segment with Visit it will return 1 (as there is one visit in the scenario with the matching hit)

Now, let's try this again as a Visit Segment:

Visit [

    Page equals A

    AND

    Logged In equals true

]

This will match both visits 1 AND 2... Visit 1 will match because it has both "Page A" (despite not being logged in), and it has a hit that is Logged In (Page B); and Visit 2 for the obvious Logged In Page A...  this segment will also return ALL the hits from those 2 visits (so Hit 1, Hit 2, Hit 3 and Hit 4) because the segment is visit scope (i.e. it returns all the hits from all the matching visits)

Before we do the last variation of "Visitor", let's look at the Visit segment with a Hit Container:

Visit [

    HIT Container [

        Page equals A

        AND

        Logged In equals true

    ]

]

This will still return ALL hits from matching visits, but the HIT container inside the segment means that the matching criteria is looking at hits that contain both criteria. So this segment will only match Visit 2 (as this is the only visit that has a HIT that is both Page A and Logged In), but Hit 3 and Hit 4 will still be included in the returned data as they are part of the same Visit.

Now, let's finish with Visitor segment.

Whether you use the version with a container, or not... in this simplified example they will both return all 5 hits, but the logic is different.

Visitor [

    Page equals A

    AND

    Logged In equals true

]

This looks at ANY Visitor who hit Page A (in any visit) or was Logged In on any hit (on any visit) (So the combination of Hit 1 or 3 for Page A, in combination with Hit 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 for Logged In)

Visitor [

    HIT Container [

        Page equals A

        AND

        Logged In equals true

    ]

]

This will return all hits made by a visitor, who has a hit that was both Page A and Logged In (Hit 3). But being Visitor scope, all the hits from all the visits will be returned by this segment.

Now, your scenario is even more complex than this simple example, because you are looking at Marketing Channels that have persisted values (by default, the value will be persisted on every hit following the initial entry for 30 days, you may have changed the retention period, but it means there are a lot of hits that are "carrying" the value)

Since I don't know your end uses, I don't know if you need all the hits from a matching visit or not... I suspect not, which is why I suggested using just a HIT segment...  you could use the HIT container inside the Visit segment if you did need to see everything in the visit. This is what I meant by potentially over complicating things...  While you could do this (depending on your needs), it's a more complicated segment... based on the tables you showed in your original post, you don't need anything more than the HIT based segment.. but maybe the are additional tables that need maybe look at average PVs/Visit under each channel... in which case, you would need to have a Visit scoped segment to get the total PVs in the context..... 

I hope this helps clarify things... though I may have confused you more (if I did, sorry)