Question on Segments in workspace

[Venky235]

I have created segments to identify my products in the rows of a freeform table like below.

Hit level Segment Name: Shoes (evar 1 = Shoes)

Hit level Segment Name: Garments (evar 1 = Garments)

Hit level Segment Name: Furniture (evar 1 = Furniture)

I measure the number of clicks for these above segments using event 3.

Can I put a segment on top of event 3 in the column and increase the number of hits along with the segments in the rows? For example, I want to include another criteria of evar 2 = socks. I understand that I can put a "OR" condition in all of the existing segments. Looking for a solution to add a segment through column. Is there a way to do this in Adobe?

[MandyGeorge · Accepted solution]

No, what you're asking, in that way, isn't possible. Generally speaking, segments refine/restrict data that's shown, not add to it. 

If you have your segments on each row and your metric at the top each segment is going to be limited to the product in that segment and return the number of clicks in that row. If you add a segment on top of your event, each cell will then be the number of clicks when the conditions in both segments are true (so for example, if you have hit level segments, it might not actually return anything if one segment is for socks and the other is for furniture). 

In a particular row, if you want the number of clicks for socks or furniture, you would need to build a single segment with an or condition. Or you could just make a 4th segment and put it in the rows along with the other 3 segments.

I am curious - if you're looking at clicks on a product, is there a reason you're using segments and not just the dimension? It sounds like you capture the product dimension you need in an evar, so just bringing in the entire evar and putting the metric against it would give you the clicks for each category without all the extra work.

[Venky235]

Yeah I know. The real use case is different. Thanks for your explanation though.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I agree with @MandyGeorge , if your segments are just "eVar1 = shoes" that's a lot of unnecessary work, over just using eVar1 as your breakdown.

Now if you do stack segments like you are suggesting.. it will filter out the values, so maybe you have 100 event3 for "shoes" in eVar1, and adding a segment of eVar2 = socks" would give you a smaller number, where the hit has both eVar1 = shoes and eVar2 = socks, possibly leaving you with 80... but that doesn't mean that eVar2 = socks is 80, as there may be more combined with other eVar1s... (unless that was a typo and you meant eVar1 = socks)

Think of it this way, segments always filter... when you stack multiple segments the values will decrease to meet both criteria... if you have completely incompatible segments like:

HIT

   eVar1 = X

and

HIT

    eVar1 = Y

Well, eVar1 cannot be both X AND Y at the same time, you will just end up with 0

But if you are mixing different segments, for something like:

• Page 1
  • eVar1 = shoes
  • eVar2 = socks
• Page 2
  • eVar1 = shoes
  • eVar2 = boots
• Page 3
  • eVar1 = shoes
  • eVar2 = coats
• Page 4
  • eVar1 = socks
  • eVar2 = shoes
• Page 4
  • eVar1 = coats
  • eVar2 = socks

If you have:

HIT

    eVar1 = shoes

It will return 3

And if you have:

HIT

    eVar2 = socks

it will return 2

It you stack, or cross rows/columns with those two segments, it will return 1, since Page 1 is the only hit that meets both criteria.