"Days since last visit" with (hit) segment

[Amigo1989]

Hey all,

a short question of the functionality of Adobe Analytics related to "days since last visit: I have created a (hit) segment, where users are just covered by the segment, if they have visit pages of our content hubs on the website. With that i just want to track users of the content hubs. Now i want to use "days since last visit". But what is this saying to me?

If i now use this segment to show "days since last visit", what does this mean? How many days have passed until the users met the criterion for the segment again, or could this be any page on our website to get counted as a visit? At this point I don't understand how Adobe works yet.

My understanding would be like this: This (hit) segment just collects users, who have visited defined pages of the segment. So i think, that the "days since last visit" can only refer to the pages defined in the segment, because this is the data set in this case? Or do I have a logic error or the "days since last visit" works differently and has nothing in common with the segment?

Thank you very much! 🙂

[yuhuisg · Accepted solution]

Your logic is not really correct.

Your segment includes all pageview hits for all of the pages defined in your segment. BUT these pages are part of a visit (or visits). And the "Days Since Last Visit" is scoped to the visit.

So in your screenshot, the report says "Based on the visits that included the pages in my segment, this is the number of unique visitors for each of the time periods since the previous visit."

Here's a specific reading:

For the date range of this dashboard, there were 32,399 unique visitors who saw a page in the "Content Marketing (mit Targeting)" segment, and the last time they had come to the website (whether by a page in the same segment or some other page) was 0 days ago, i.e. they had last visited the same day (maybe once in the morning, then once in the evening).

Also, I suggest replacing the "Unique Visitors" metric with the "Visits" metric, so that it is aligned with the dimension that you've used there.

[Amigo1989]

Hey, thank you for your feedback! What irritates me, is the fact that the "Days since last visit"-Segements are hit-based in this visualization. So i do not get, how Adobe can look to the visit, if these segments for "Days since last visit" are hit-based.

[yuhuisg]

While the segment is hit-based, you're using the Unique Visitors metric. So AA is actually counting all visitors that had at least one hit that matches your segment definition. So it's not a problem with your segment, but rather the combination of the metrics being used that yields this result.

[Amigo1989]

And what do i have to do, if i just want to see the days since last visit just for the segment defintion respectively just for the pages defined in the segment? Is this possible at all?

[yuhuisg]

You can use the Page Views metric, which is hit-scoped.

[Amigo1989]

so the metric defines the scope level? this would be new for me. because then i do not understand, why i am using a hit segment, if the metric defines the scope level. So the hit- segment defines, that i just want to take look at specific hits and with the unique visitors metric i tell adobe, tell me all of this unique visitor, who has met the criteria of the hit segment?

[Amigo1989]

i think, what irritates me completely, is that i am thinking my created segment is the data base in this case which filters the data which i want to view. So in my thoughts just that data of my segment is included. So where does the other visits come from, which are not part of my created hit segment?

[yuhuisg]

It might help to consider a very simple example.

Let's say your website only had one visitor, Jack, in the whole of October 2020, as follows:

Row number	Date and Time	Page
1	2020-10-01 10:00AM	home
2	2020-10-09 1:30PM	content-marketing
3	2020-10-18 9:15AM	home
4	2020-10-22 5:07PM	content-marketing

Assuming that Jack visited one-and-only-one page at each visit, i.e. the Page, and assuming that "content-marketing" is a page in your segment.

When you run your report for 1-31 October 2020, what do you expect the result to be when reported with Unique Visitors and Visits metrics?

[Amigo1989]

Ok, here's what I'm thinking: Totally i would have 1 Unique Visitor and 4 Visits. But if I now add the hit segment in reporting (page = content marketing), I should only see row 2 and 4. That would be 2 visits for me. Is that what you mean? It is not clear to me whether my segment only filters out visits that relate to the segment. Which in this case would be 2 visits for the segment.Thank you very much for your help.

[yuhuisg]

Yes, your answer is spot-on... if you were just counting all unique visitors or all visits. But now, you want to break it down by Days Since Last Visit.

So this is the data that AA will query:

Row number	Date and Time	Page	Days Since Last Visit
1	2020-10-01 10:00AM	home
2	2020-10-09 1:30PM	content-marketing	8
3	2020-10-18 9:15AM	home	9
4	2020-10-22 5:07PM	content-marketing	4

It applies your segment, resulting in this data:

Row number	Date and Time	Page	Days Since Last Visit
2	2020-10-09 1:30PM	content-marketing	8
4	2020-10-22 5:07PM	content-marketing	4

So you get 2 visits, but reported like this:

Days Since Last Visit	Visits
4	1
8	1

And that's what you finally see in Analysis Workspace.

[Amigo1989]

@yuhuisg Thank you very very much for your help!!! 🙂