Segment container - Hit? or Visit?

[#1]

Hello everyone,

Choosing which container to user whether visit or hit while creating segments is always confusing - can anyone help me understand the below case?

Support I have a tracking code = abc,

I want to know how many people have come to my site via tracking code "abc" and how many people have actually ordered.

I made two segments for comparison

Rule is the same: tracking code = abc but the container is different -- one with a "hit"container, another is "visit" container.

As you can see, only order metric gives me the different result while visits, and UVs are the same.

When I filter the tracking code "abc" from the tracking code report and apply the same metrics, the number of orders are the same as the result of the "hit" bucket segement.

Can anyone help me understand why the number of orders differ when applying hit bucket and visit bucket? What does it mean?

Which one should I use? visit container or hit container?

Thank you so much in advance!!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

I would advise you to read through this first : About Segments and Containers

Now here is how I understand it:

• Hit container == one Adobe Analytics Server call
• Visit Container == returns data from all Adobe Analytics server call sent during a visit
• Visitor container == returns data from all Adobe Analytics server call sent during a visit

I often use the box explanation with my colleagues for segmentation.

• All Adobe Analytics data are in a really big box that contains data for all visitors
  • If you open this box you will see smaller boxes which are Visitors, each Visitor box contains all the lifetime data for a specific visitor
    • If you open a visitor box then you will see that it contains smaller boxes which are visits, each visit box contain all the data sent during a specific visit for this specific visitor
      • If you open a visit box then you will see that it contains smaller boxes which are hits (analytics server call), each contain only contain data send in the Adobe Analytics server call

Each box cannot see what is the box above!

Now imagine that we create a segment with container visit, in simple terms this what happens when a segment is applied:

1. The system goes to the visit box level
2. It will open each visit box level and check if rule X is met
3. If it is the WHOLE box is selected and will be used for reporting

So lets say my rule is page equals Home, then for each visit box it will open it and check that at some point during the visit page was equal to Home, if it is it will take the WHOLE content of the box for reporting. This means that if you do a page report with this segment, you will see ALL page values that were contained in the boxes that at some point had page equals HOME

Now imagine that we create a segment with container HIT, in simple terms this what happens when a segment is applied:

1. The system goes to the hit box level
2. It will open each hit box level and check if rule X is met
3. If it is the WHOLE box is selected and will be used for reporting

Only the data in this hit will be used so if you run a page report and we consider that our rule was page equals Home, then only like item Home should be present.

[#3]

Dear Unjib,

It is because if you select 'Visit' container, not only the selected tracking code will be in the list but all the tracking codes within the same visits and it's attributed orders.

I suggest you to breakdown the segments by Tracking Code:

In 'Hit' container you will be seeing only one Tracking Code i.e. abc.

In 'Visit' container you will be seeing few other tracking codes if it is within the visit.

So, for your request, you should use 'Hit' container.

Thank You

Arun

[#4]

Thank you so much for your comment, but in my case above,

I captured all the people who have come to site via the tracking code -- and among them I wanted to see how many people actually "ordered"

As far as I understood (maybe I'm wrong) the tracking code value should last till the visit ends, which makes sense because

the number of visit and visitors are the same when comparing the tracking code segment with container HIT and VISIT (Capture below)

I still don't understand why the number of "order" gives me a different result. Shouldn't they be the same as well? If somebody comes to my site via the tracking code "abc" and orders the product during this visit -- it should be counted for the rule (tracking code = abc) with both HIT and VISIT container?

Thank you so much in advance for your advise.

[#5]

In your specific instance, the difference might be due to tracking code changing values mid-visit. If someone manages to stumble across two tracking codes, then make an order, they would be caught in the visit-based segment while being excluded in the hit-based segment.

[#6]

Without knowing the implementation and configuration of the report suite I would say that the order event might be sent in some instances where there is no tracking code persisting.

I would check the following:

• Check the configuration of the tracking code expiration and allocation under admin >> report suite >> select report suite >. edit settings >> conversion >> conversion variables
• Some of the scenario that would explain the discrepancy:
  • The order event was sent before the tracking code was set
  • The tracking code expired before the order event was sent

The best solution would be for you to extract data feed data for the specific days and figure out what is going on. Open the Data Feed Interface

In terms of columns:

• date_time
• visid_high
• visid_low
• post_visid_high
• post_visid_low
• visid_type
• post_visid_type
• cust_visid
• mcvisid
• campaign
• post_campaign
• pagename
• post_pagename
• page_url
• post_page_url
• event_list
• post_event_list
• visit_num
• visit_page_num

Once you have the data then you should be able to see where post_event_list contains the id of your event and post_campaign is empty. Once you figured out the hits (each raw is a hit) then you should apply filters to get all the hits of the specific visit, you can do that by looking at the raw columns: post_visid_high and post_visid_low (these 2 should be the unique ID of the visitor) and visit_num.