Ralph Lauren

Introduction to Adobe Analytics

Ben Stephenson
February 2023
Introductions
We’re the analytics team!
We look after the analytics data that the site
generates and help you to create and manage
dashboards so you can see what is happening
on the site

Chris Jarvis
Ecommerce Insights Director
Chris.Jarvis@ralphlauren.com

Juliana Toazza
Insights Analyst
Juliana.Toaza@ralphlauren.com

Ben Stephenson
Insights Consultant
ben.stephenson@ralphlauren.com
120 Feet
We specialise in web analytics, tag management, analysis and reporting services

We are a small agency who like to work on site with our clients as part of their teams,
rather than remotely and behind closed doors

Ben Stephenson
ben@120feet.com

Consultant with 120 Feet since 2016

Key focus is analytics implementation
Worked with Ralph Lauren since 2017; working with teams in EU, APAC and NA
Agenda
• Concepts • Analysis Workspace
• Report Suites • Tables and Visualisations
• Dimensions • Date ranges
• Metrics • Calculated metrics
• Product String • Marketing Channels
• Hits and Visits • Rules
• Segments • Breakdowns
• Classifications
Introduction to Adobe
Analytics
What is Adobe Analytics?
Adobe Analytics is a tool that allows you to track what people are doing
on your website to provide directional guidance in improving website
Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s)

It is not a financial reporting tool, nor a 100% accurate record of every

single interaction on the site.
The information is sent using an asynchronous JavaScript snippet, so
there are many technical reasons why this information might get lost in
transit.
Analysis Workspace
• Workspace is the dynamic reporting and dashboarding interface for Adobe Analytics
• It allows you to drag and drop elements to build your own data tables
• You can drag dimensions and metrics on to a Freeform Table to create the desired layout
• Drag segments and date ranges on to the tables as filters
• Dimensions can be broken down many times by dragging onto existing rows
• Dashboards can be shared, scheduled, and distributed
Opening Workspace
• Open Adobe Analytics by visiting
https://experience.adobe.com/#/@polo/home
• Log in with your Experience Cloud ID, then click the Analytics link

8
Basic Layout
Choose Report
Suite

Drag segments
Choose or drag
date range

Drag metrics, or
segments or
dates as filters

Drag dimensions,
values will be
enumerated

9
Report Suites
• The report suite is the way that AA collects all the hit data together for a particular
site
• Typically you have one report suite per site (domain)
• RL has one per “platform instance”:
• One for all the EMEA sites (including .eu and .global)
• One for NA
• One for APAC (five sites)
• One for Japan
• One for Hong Kong
Dragging to a Freeform Table
Drag the elements from the left hand side on to the table
Dragging on top of an existing column will replace it. To add it instead, drag the
new metric so that a blue bar and hint appears next to an existing metric

11
Dragging to a Freeform Table
Drag a dimension on to an existing dimension row to add a breakdown
You can keep adding breakdown after breakdown (although it can get quite hard to
read)

12
Saving and Sharing
• Save using the Project > Save menu
• You need to give it a name first (you’ll be prompted)
• This saves it for your user only
• Using Save As will save a copy
• You can save versions with notes

• Share using the Share > Share Project menu

• Choose who to share it with
• Give people Edit, Duplicate or View permissions
• If you have created segments or calculated metrics, click the
“Share embedded components” tick box
Variables
• 95% of the data passed to the tag is to populate the variables
• Variables can either capture text values, or numbers
• To capture text, you need to use a Dimension
• To capture a number, you need to use a Metric
• Metrics hold running totals; you can either just increment (capturing an event has
happened) or they can capture a number, which is incremented to the total
Dimensions
• Dimensions are text values that are used to describe the state of the customer
journey at each step
• Page Name, Product ID, Price, Order Number
• Orange in the interface, values are yellow
• Usually used as rows; can be columns if only a small number of values
• Used to look at a snapshot of what is happening at the time an event occurs

• There are two types of dimension: Traffic and Conversion

(These are a bit of a throw back to the 1990s when the product was first written, but there are still implications
in the way data is collected and reports are generated)
Dimensions
Traffic dimensions
• Also known as Props
• Represented by “c” in the tag
• 75 available
• Only persist for the duration of the hit
• Used for pathing (entry, exit, next value)
• Can be set to capture lists of information
• 100 character limit
• Used for traffic data, or things that will
change with each page
• Page name, timestamp, previous page
Conversion dimensions
• Also known as eVars
• Represented by “v” in the tag
• 250 available
• Persist between hits
• Persistence is configurable per variable
• Cannot be used for pathing
• Only three list variables
• 250 character limit
• Used for things which aren’t likely to change,
or that need to be remembered for future
events
• Language, locale, domain, product
Metrics
• Metrics are events which are used to take a ‘snapshot’ of the values of the
dimensions when something happens
• Held as numbers or currency amounts
• Captured as counters to indicate how many times that thing happens
• Page View, Order, Product View, [Specific] Button Click
• Can also capture values
• Product price, page load time
• 1000 events available
• Green in the interface
• Usually used as columns
Key Dimensions
Page Page name including the hierarchy, only for page load calls Product Product ID, via Product String, persisted from PDP through to order

v10 / c7 Page Name : Page name for all calls, page loads and custom links web category - method the product was viewed (category, search,
v20
YAML, etc)
v11 / c8 Page Locale : Locale of the page
v22 Product Name
v12 / c1 Page Type : the type of the page
v23 Product Division
v24 Product Price Type
Marketing v28 Product SKU
Channel Marketing Channel Details
v27 Product Brand
UTM Details – all UTM parameters split by a colon
v21 v71 Product Colour
(includes classifications to break out the details
c_v21 UTM Medium v70 Product Size
c_v21 UTM Source v82 PDP Tab clicked
c_v21 UTM Campaign
c_v21 UTM Term
v72 Category Refinement Type - category filter type
c_v21 UTM Content
v73 Category Refinement Value - the selected value of the filter
c_v21 UTM Segment (used by email channel)
c20 Refinement Attributes - combined type and value
c_v21 UTM Gender (used by email channel)
v76 Category Sort
c_v21 UTM Division (used by email channel)
c34 Clickthrough Position - the position in the grid of the clicked item
c_v21 UTM Sub Channel
c35 Clickthrough Item - the product ID of the clicked item
v86 Search Term
v35 Order ID
v42 Payment Method
v32 Billing Post Code Mobile Device Type (Other, Mobile, Tablet)
v39 Coupon Code Day
Day of Week
See the Adobe Cheat Sheet and Documentation for full details
Hour of Day
Key Metrics
e1 Category Sort Page Views
e2 Category Refinement Visits
e135 PLP Product Click through Unique Visitors

e76 Search Successful Cart Additions

e75 Search Unsuccessful Cart Removals
e94 Search Performed Cart Views
Checkouts
e93 Product Views
e136 Select Size Orders
e30 Select Colour Conversion Rate (Orders / Visits)
e35 PDP Tab Click Revenue $ (see next slide)
e33 PDP Image Enlarge
Units
AOV $ (see next slide)
UPT
AUR $ (see next slide)

See the Adobe Cheat Sheet and Documentation for full details
Filtering Dimensions
Hover over a dimension then click the right arrow to get a list of values
Drag a value to a table to display just that row
Drag a value to the segment panel to create a temporary segment

20
Filtering Dimensions
You can stack segments, dates and filters on top of each other in columns
This table is showing visits by day, filtered by time (last week, purple), device
(mobile, blue), and webstore (UK, yellow)

21
Adding another table or panel

22
Names and Labels
Projects, panels and tables can all be renamed
Click on the name and it will turn into a text box

23
Visualisations
• Visualisations are added to a report by either:
• Selecting the data in a table, then right clicking and selecting the Visualisation
type you want
• Selecting the data in a table, then dragging the Visualisation from the left
panel (second icon in the far left)

• Visualisations include line graphs, bar charts, donuts (pie graphs),

scatter graphs, histograms...

24
Visualisations

Select the data from

the table

Right click, select

Visualize

Select a
Visualization type

25
Visualisations

Select data from table

Select Visualisation from left

hand panel

Drag the visualisation to the

panel

26
Visualisations
• Data Tables are also visualisations
• Clicking on the gear icon in the header opens the options for the table
• You can turn on/off the number display, the percent display, and the background

27
Data in Visualisations
Visualisations are dynamic – if you change the selection in the source
data table then the visualisation will update
To lock a data source for a visualisation, click on the coloured dot to the
left of the name, and click the Lock Selection checkbox

28
Date Ranges
• Dates (purple in the UI) can be added to a table:
• as rows or breakdowns
• as column filters (above a metric header)
• as global filters (drag to the segment panel)
• A date range added to a data table will overwrite the panel date range
• Similarly date ranges in calculated metrics (for example in a “vs LW” metric)
will not be affected by the panel date range

29
Adding Dates to Tables
Use the left hand toolbox, make sure the bottom icon is
selected on the far left, then scroll down to the Time
section and click the “Time” link

Or search for “FY23” in the box at the top

Hover over an item and click the i icon to see the

details of the date range

30
Dates as columns or rows

31
Calculated Metrics
Sometimes the metrics you capture in the tag don’t give you everything you need
You can create new metrics in the UI, called Calculated Metrics
Click the + icon at the top of the
metrics section
Calculated Metrics
The metric builder allows you to manipulate existing metrics, add filters, segments,
functions, or static numbers
Drag and drop items from the left hand side, and use containers or functions from
the Add button on the right hand side
The graph shows a preview of
the values of this calculation
over the last 90 days
Calculated Metrics
• Once you have created metrics, they can be used just the same as standard metrics
in all your dashboards
Calculated Metrics
• If you use a calculated metric and then apply a filter to the table, remember the
filter applies to all parts of the calculated metric
Segments
• Segments are filters that can be saved and applied across data table columns,
rows, or whole reports
• Segments can be applied at hit, visit or visitor level

“All hits where [page name] = ‘basket’”

“All visits where [Add to Cart] > 0”
“All visitors where [orders] > 1”
Segments
• Segments can be dragged to panels or tables to apply the filter to that visualisation
• They are blue in the UI
Creating Segments
Create a new segment by right clicking on a
dimension value and selecting Create segment from
selection, or use the [+] button at the top of the
Segments list in the left hand menu
Segment Builder
• You can drag dimensions or metrics in to the segment builder
• For dimensions you then select a value (or list of values)
• For metrics you would select “exists”, or enter a number
Segments
• Segments can be defined to be at hit, visit or visitor scope

“All hits where [page name] = ‘basket’”

“All visits where [Add to Cart] > 0”

“All visitors where [orders] > 1”

Hits and Visits
• Hit: a single image request call to the analytics system

• Visit: a session on the site, it can contain many page views and lasts until there is
30 minutes of session inactivity or until the session reaches 12 hours in duration

• Visitor: a unique instance of a cookie ID (or close approximation) during a

specified time frame. If the same person with the same SiteCatalyst cookie ID
visits your website multiple times in the same day, that activity would count as
multiple visits but only one unique visitor. A customer cookie lasts for two years

• Instance: the number of times a variable was defined. Each time Adobe Analytics
sees a value within a variable, instances increment by one in that respective report
Marketing Channels
• Adobe calculates the channel based on a highly configurable rule set
which is processed for each hit
• The rules can be set up to assign a channel based on a variety of
parameters, but we generally use query string parameters and referrer
• Channel reports use the Marketing Channel dimension
• You will also see dimensions called “Last Touch Channel” and “First Touch
Channel” – these are no longer recommended; rather use Marketing Channel
and in line attribution
Marketing Channel Rules
• Rules run top to bottom and stop when a match is
found
• There are some built in Adobe rules as well (Paid
Search detection, Natural Search detection) but
most of them are configured to use query string
parameters
Marketing Channel Reports
Marketing Channel Reports
Marketing Channel - Visits
• If using Visits as the metrics, then the sum of the channels will not usually
equal the total visits. This is commonly raised as a tracking error

• Marketing Channel is effectively a dimension, persisted against the user

cookie
• Multiple values are possible within the same visit, and against the same
visitor
• So a visit can have multiple channels, and a single visit can be counted as
a row against multiple channel values

(This is less confusing now Adobe have dropped the Last Touch Channel naming)
Multiple Channel Example

Page # Time Page Channel

10:00 Google Search
Visits
1 10:01 Home Paid Search Total: 1
2 10:03 Product List PPC: 1
3 10:05 Product Details
10:08 BestShoppingDeals
Visits
4 10:08 Product Details Affiliate Total: 1
5 10:10 Product Details PPC: 1
Affiliate: 1
6 10:11 Cart
7 10:13 Checkout Order
8 10:15 Confirmation Last Touch: Affiliate = 1
First Touch: PPC = 1
Participation: Affiliate = 1, PPC = 1
Linear: Affiliate = 0.5, PPC = 0.5
Attribution Settings
Contact

Ben Stephenson

ben@120feet.com
Ben.Stephenson@ralphlauren.com
Appendix 1
• Hits, Visits and Visitors
Hits, Visits and Visitor

>30mins
Hits, Visits and Visitor

>30mins

• Hit refers to each individual page view / link click

Hits, Visits and Visitor

>30mins

• Visit refers to everything within a visit

• Time out is 30 minutes of inactivity
Hits, Visits and Visitor

<30mins

• Visit refers to everything within a visit

• Time out is 30 minutes of inactivity
Hits, Visits and Visitor

• Visit refers to everything within a visit

• Time out is 30 minutes of inactivity
Hits, Visits and Visitor

>30mins

• Visitor is everything associated with the customer

identification cookie
Hits, Visits and Visitor

>30mins

• Visitor is everything associated with the customer

identification cookie
Hits, Visits and Visitor

>30mins

• Hit segment includes only the hits

• 1 hit, 1 visit, 1 visitor
Hits, Visits and Visitor

>30mins

• Visit segment includes all hits in the included visits

• 4 hits, 1 visit, 1 visitor
Hits, Visits and Visitor

>30mins

• Visitor segment includes everything all visitor history

• 9 hits, 2 visits, 1 visitor
Appendix 2
The product string
The Product String
The product string is the way to pass product information
It takes the product details, including product specific dimensions and evars, and can be
used to track products across multiple events (product view, add to cart, checkout, purchase)

It is a (deep breath…) comma separated list of colon separated lists of pipe separated
values…

category;product id;quantity;price;merchandising event|merchandising event;merchandising

evar|merchandising evar

For multiple products, the whole thing is repeated after a comma

The Product String
Appendix 3
Classifications
Classifications
• Classifications are a way to extend or augment the data collected
• They can run automatically based on rules (generally within ~12 hours
of the data being collected)
• They can run “on demand” when data is uploaded

• There are two common scenarios:

• Adding extra data from an offline source (product catalog, user database)
• Splitting data out of a combined variable into component parts
Classifications: Scenario 1
Your product catalog has 20 data fields, but only a couple are available
on the website. You want to report on sales based on all product
attributes.

• Capture the product ID in the tag, and pass into the analytics as an
evar or on the product string
• Add classifications for the additional product fields
• Import a file each day with the rest of the product data
• The data is processed within ~12 hours of the import
Classifications: Scenario 1
Classifications: Scenario 2
You want to capture five different tracking parameters, but don’t have
enough evars available.

• In the tagging, combine all five values into one delimited string, and
pass it in as one evar
• Create five classifications under the evar
• Add a classification rule that will split the values
• The data is processed within ~12 hours of the data being captured
Classifications: Scenario 2
Thank you for your time!
If you have any questions, you can contact the Analytics team at:

RL-RLE-Analytics-EU@RalphLauren.com
Juliana.Toazza@ralphlauren.com
Ben.Stephenson@ralphlauren.com

https://ralphlauren.atlassian.net/l/cp/9nf9gcTx

50NBS 3rd Floor