Building Segments in Adobe Analytics is a crucial skill for making the most out of the data that is collected. I want to share the thought process that you can follow to build a segment, this template of thinking will help you to get started in working with segments more easily.

What is Segmentation ? 
Segmentation allows you to use data points you have collected ( Dimensions and Metrics ) about users as criteria to focus on users that qualify. This allows you to look at the same metrics collected – say 1000 conversions with different perspectives – 500 from desktop users, 300 from mobile and 200 from tablet users is one way of looking at the 1000 conversions.  400 from first time visitors and 600 from returning visitors is another way to segment the 1000 conversions.

Why Segment ? 
Identify which segments are working for you, where there is an opportunity to optimize, know more about your segment preferences, use your marketing personas and translate them into segments to analyze how is that user segment responding to your campaigns and interacting with your website. Once you get hang of it – almost every business questions can be answered more effectively by leveraging segments.

So now that we are done with the primer on what and why of segmentation let us focus on the How ?

Simplified approach for Planning a Segment

For planning a segment ask yourself following 2 questions :
Question 1 :   How much data do you want to see ?
Answering this  question helps you to Scope a segment. In terms of choices for answers to this question  your choices are :

• Visitor  –
  I want to see everything [ all visits]  about the users even if the user qualifies for the segment in one of the visits.
• Visits
  I want to see data of that specific visit in which the user qualified for the segment
• Hit
  I want to see data of that specific hit [ image request ] in which the user qualified for the  segment criteria

Question 2 :  What is the segment criteria  ?

In terms of segment criteria – you have to think through the following options

• Dimensions or Metrics or both you plan to qualify the Segment for
• Operator –  AND , OR and THEN  ( Sequential Segments )
• Exclude Criteria if any
• Constrain the criteria with use of Nested Containers

Examples of Constraining :

• With Visitor as scope , Constraining the criteria to a hit for qualifying the user. For example to know everything about a user with a Big Purchase of 500$.
• With Visitor as Scope , constraining the criteria to 2 different visits with a choice of OR ,Sequential , AND operator between the 2 visits.  For example started the conversion process in one visit but did not complete  and completed in a later visit.

Hope this template of Planning segment should help you to get started with building segments with more clarity. Do share your thoughts.
Next Steps :

• Build the Segment using the UI
• Refer to the circles that preview how much traffic in last 90 days qualify for the segment.
• Save and Apply the segment to reports to verify the results
• Share , Tag, Mark as Favorite, Approved.

Additional Tip : 
Use Segments as Dimensions and break down values in Analysis Workspace and enhance your reporting exponentially.

If you are interested to get hands on training on how to build segments and how to maximize your use of Analysis Workspace  in classroom or virtual, please reach out to me on ct@teknopoint.in