Visit Number not showing the correct data

[isinha]

How does the Visit Number dimension work in Adobe Analytics? Does it take into account the reporting time frame or the lifetime of the visitor?

[pradnya_balvir]

Hi @isinha ,

The ‘Visit number’ dimension reports which visit the visitor is currently on. When a new visit starts, this dimension item increases by 1.

 For example, if the visitor has never been to your site before, their first visit belongs to the dimension item "Visit number 1". If this is the visitor’s 12th visit to your site, they belong to the dimension item "Visit number 12".

Refer below document:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics/components/dimensions/visit-number

[Krishna_Musku]

@isinha Visit Number accounted to the lifetime of the visitor, not by the reporting time frame.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Yes, as @Krishna_Musku said, Visit Number is a lifetime metric... so if you have a two year data retention in Adobe, you won't even see "Visit Number 1" for users that started coming to the site more than 2 years ago (and are still identified as the same user)

[JillSt2]

My data on one account shows Visit Number 3, but New Visitor.  

And on another account shows timeSinceLastVisit = newvisitor, Repeat Visitor, Visit number=3

What's going on?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

If your  "New Visitor" segment looks at visitors who have "visit number 1", then that will be during the Panel's time frame... 

So let's say:

May 1

• Visit Number 1

May 5

• Visit Number 2

May 11

• Visit Number 3

And you are pulling a report for This month, you will get data from May 5th and May 11th (Visit Number 2 and 3), since the visitor came to the site this month and had Visit Number 1.

Similar to Repeat Visitor... if you are looking only at Visitor level scope and Visit Number, any Visitor that had a visit number other than 1 would be a part of that segment... 

Using my example above, the user would appear in both segments.

Now, if you use Adobe's pre-defined segments, which are limited to "Visit" scope, you can still break this down by UVs, your Visits will be isolated, but your Visitors will still show in both groups (just on different visits)

If you really need to isolate your Visitors, then you need to go more complex on your Visitor logic. You would need to add exclusions into the definitions to provide logic for making the segments non-overlapping.

You might want to check out the session I did last year about creating non-overlapping New/Repeat Visitor segments:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/events/the-skill-exchange-recordings/analytics/may2023/ro... 

[JillSt2]

Thanks Jennifer. The super odd thing is that this was all firing on one beacon call:

timeSinceLastVisit = newvisitor, Repeat Visitor, Visit number=3

[JillSt2]

This also does not make sense to me:

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Hi,

What do you mean that "timeSinceLastVisit = newvisitor, Repeat Visitor, Visit number=3" was all on one call?

And, now I also know that you have some sort of custom "New" vs "Return" eVar which I didn't know before..

All the above was based on using "native" Adobe values, such as visit number and calculating a new / return visitor based on that.... 

At this point, I would say whatever you are collecting in eVar4 is wrong and not to be trusted... 

I am assuming it is derived using this extension? https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics/implementation/vars/plugins/getnewrepeat

But this is based on client set Cookies... these are subject to deletion... but also, these are not based on lifetime like Visit Number...

The default 

getNewRepeat();

is only 30 days worth... and most cookies now tend to get deleted after 7 days by a lot of browsers. But even if it stayed for the full 30 days, the user's Visit Number 1 and 2 in your screenshot could have been months ago... You can't mix two differently scope dimensions like this.

[JillSt2]

This happened all in the same call:

And yes, they used the Common Web SDK Plugins extension. I'll circle back with the implementation team - they clearly did something wrong!

[Jennifer_Dungan]

OK, this helps... and yeah, something definitely looks wrong there. Data is contradicting itself... now your question is making a lot more sense... my first answer was based on creating segments in Workspace (using Visit Number)...I haven't used the Web SDK / XDM Streams... I am not used to seeing the Visit Number in the data going to Adobe (generally that is done via processing...)