Using Hit Depth to tie initial browsing behavior back to a purchase.

[FPW_AA]

The question I'm trying to answer is: can I see the relationship of the first product page (we capture the product SKU on this page) in a visit, and see if that product/SKU is the same SKU on the checkout page? There are probably multiple ways to tackle this question but for starters I was curious if Hit Depth could be utilized for this. I am certainly open to other approaches, and I'm pretty sure I can query this scenario in a different tool, but it would be great if I could see this in Adobe as well. 

For sake of a more concrete example. Let's say I have an ecommerce site, I sell pens and pencils of different colors, sizes, design, etc. Customers will come into my site and browse, often looking at multiple pens/pencil product pages. I want to understand if the first pen/pencil they looked at matches with the pen/pencil they ultimately purchased. I need to understand if their first touch with this set of product pages is effective. Mind you, the product pages are rarely if ever the first page my customers go to, there's series of clicks and page views that occur before getting to my product pages. I want to focus on a visit approach to start, as it becomes more complicated when we bring in the visitor dynamic. I think if there was a way to force Adobe to give me the minimum value for hit depths hitting these certain page groups I could use that to tie it to visits that also hit the purchase event.  

Thanks in advance for any ideas or new approaches!

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

I don't know if you can force Adobe to give the lowest Hit Depth for a specific hit... I believe it will just give you all...

What about using a "Conversion Syntax" variable.... this would also require some custom code to ensure the value is set only on the first product detail, or you could try using the allocation "Original Value (First)" on the new eVar  (I haven't tried this scenario, so this is off the top of my head)... and set Expire After Visit.

You would set this eVar to Enable Merchandising, use "Conversion Variable Syntax" and then bind it with your Purchase event.

Now, when the user visits the Product Detail page, set your SKU as normal, but also set it in this new eVar, I would test if the "Original Value (First)" allocation works, if not, you may need some custom code and a session variable to prevent setting this new eVar on subsequent detail pages.

Conversion Variable Syntax will send a value to Adobe, but they won't show this in your reports yet... not on the detail page... basically, the value is stored against the user for the Visit, and if a purchase event is fired, this eVar is then stitched to that purchase... so you should be able to see the SKU from "first product detail page" and all the items in the purchase, and compare if they match?

If you have 3 items in the purchase, I think this will attach to each record? Sadly, I don't think there is any sort of automatic comparison in Adobe for "does dimension X match dimension Y"... but it's a start... if it works at least you don't have try and map in your minimum Hit Depth.

Conversion Variable Syntax is more often used with uses like tracking search terms that resulted in a Cart Addition (what terms did the user use to get to the product detail). Essentially, this uses "Most Recent (Last)" to set the Search Terms from the results page, then bind them to the scAdd on the product detail, but there are a variety of ways to use this "pass a value forward" to your advantage.