Adobe Analytics Data Types and Variables

Imran Khan
4 min readMar 20, 2024

Adobe analytics allow us to capture and analyze data from digital properties with the help of evars and props. These data types help organize and categorize the information collected, allowing businesses to derive insights and make informed decisions.

Data Types

Below are the two data types supported by Adobe Analytics:

  1. Metrics: Metrics in number type which allow us to represent quantitative measurements or numerical data that quantify user interactions, behaviors, and outcomes. For Example page views, visits, conversions, revenue, bounce rate, and average session duration.
  2. Dimensions: Dimensions is String type which is text and used as qualitative attributes or descriptive characteristics that provide context to the quantitative data captured by metrics. For Example page URL, traffic source, geographic location, device type, and browser type.

Variables

Below are the variables defined depending on the characteristics:

Traffic Variables

Traffic variables used to capture and classify various aspects of website or app traffic for analysis within the Adobe Analytics platform. These variables help in understanding user behavior, traffic sources, and other important metrics.

Traffic Variables Characteristics:

  • Store up to 100 bytes of information. More than 100 bytes will get truncate
  • Accept only alphanumeric values, integers or numbers are not allowed.
  • Traffic variables are non persistent and its value doesn’t persist beyond the hit.
  • A correlation report can be generated between the traffic variables sent to Adobe Analytics in one hit.
  • Traffic variables are case sensitive. eg. name and Name are two different property.
  • traffic variables get refer as props or s.props

Traffic Variable Type:

  1. Predefined Traffic Variables such as Page, Site Section, Error Page, Server, etc.
  2. Custom Traffic Variables: Up to 75 custom traffic variables are allowed
  3. List Props: Accepts multiple, delimited values in same hit. It is configurable to custom traffic variables.

Imp Note: Metric like orders, revenues, lead form submission and other key down stream event metrics don’t get apply to custom traffic variables and only get apply to conversion variables.

Traffic variables allow us to generate report on page views and pathing reports where visitor navigate from one page to another.

Conversion Variables

Conversion variables are persistent in nature and also called as eVars.

Conversion Variables Characteristics:

  • Store up to 255 bytes of information. More than 255 bytes will get truncate
  • Accept string or counter values.
  • In report we can breakdown one conversion variables by another irrespective or values got sent in the same hit or not.
  • Traffic variables are non persistent and its value doesn’t persist beyond the hit.
  • Not case sensitive
  • traffic variables get refer as eVars or s.eVars

Traffic Variable Type:

Important Note: Metrics like product views, revenues, cart additions, orders as well as any other key down stream event metrics apply to conversion variables. This makes them more useful for allocating towards business requirements compared to traffic variables.

Call to action gets cover as part of conversion variables.

Events (Conversion Events)

Events which gets turn into success which also called as custom events. There are both pre-defines and custom events

Interactions that users have with a website or app that you want to track. Events can encompass a wide range of actions, such as button clicks, video views, file downloads, form submissions, and more. They provide valuable insights into user engagement and behavior beyond page views.

Events in Adobe Analytics are tracked through JavaScript. When an event occurs, data is sent to Adobe Analytics, including event details. Tracking events provides insights into user interactions. Adobe Analytics offers tools for analysis and optimization.

By tracking events, you can gain deeper insights into how users are interacting with your website or app, identify areas for improvement, and measure the effectiveness of various features or marketing campaigns.

Custom Events: products views, cars additions, order review, orders, video starts and ends.

Pre-defines events: Average page views per visit, average time on site, bounce rate, carts, checkouts, page views, visits, etc.

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