Just to clarify: you are asking how visit count might be affected when using "Then" statements with different container scenarios? (particularly in the context of visit exclusion based on a sequence of hits)
I can see you have an example with a sequential segment. I tried to break your logic down considering the different criteria you are interested in.
"Then" (within 1 hit): this creates a sequential condition. If this condition is not met, the visit won't be excluded. The narrower the conditions, the fewer visits will match the exclusion criteria, which might keep visit numbers higher. When you apply very specific or strict conditions in a segment—such as requiring multiple actions to happen in a particular sequence with a "Then" statement—fewer visits will meet all the conditions you've set. Because of this, fewer visits will be excluded from your dataset.
Exclude Visits: Visits that meet the full sequence will be excluded from reporting, lowering the total number of visits in your reports.
When applying Include all or only after sequence:
Include all sequence impact:
In this case, every instance that matches the sequence that you have as an example (Entry Page, followed by Page contains X/Y, followed by CTA Name Z) will be considered.
This would mean if a visitor navigates from Page X to another page and then triggers a CTA named Z, this whole visit will be excluded if the condition is met. The number of visits is reduced as matching visits are excluded.
Only after sequence impact:
This option includes all hits after a sequence. This option may reduce the hits within a visit but still count the visit itself. If many visits contain the sequence, the hit count will decrease, but the number of visits will stay the same.
Just to sum up:
Using exclude: applying 'Exclude' in the container, the total number of visits would decrease because all visits that meet the exclusion conditions are discarded.
Using 'then": adding this operator with strict conditions (e.g., "within 1 hit" or "within 1 page"), can make it more difficult for visits to meet all conditions, especially if you're requiring actions to happen in a particular sequence or a defined time frame.
Using "Only After" sequence: this can further filter the data that you will be looking at in your report. This would limit the data to a subset of hits after a specific sequence. So here we only want to consider the actions of the visits AFTER the sequence that you defined.
Source https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/analytics/components/segmentation/segmentation-workflow/s...
