Event property capture

Properties provide additional context around the events your customers generate. Event properties are attributes of a particular event and reflect the state and additional metadata at which the event was generated. For the event 'checkout.click', an event property could be 'category’ which denotes the type of person checking out. A customer could generate the 'checkout.click' event by being a 'guest' or 'user'. The event property 'guest' provides more information about the specific event. Split supports capturing event specific properties and exposes these properties within Split’s metric definition builder. With event properties, you can create more granular and flexible metrics.

Below is a sample event - 'checkout.click' - showing the event properties with Split’s common fields removed. We will use these event properties in the examples below.

{
  "eventTypeId": "checkout.click",
  "environmentName": "Production",
  "trafficTypeName": "user",
  "timestamp": 1557936519990,
  "value": 0,
  "source": "Segment",
  "foreignId": "ajs-85cb03f2f34af1426d9a2128146ab832",
  "properties": {
    "category": "guest", 
    "packaging_fees": "25.08",
    "discount_saving": "4",
    "label": "necklace",
    "login_id": "null", 
    "page_version":"unit_page", 
    "total_tax": "32.00", 
    "total_cost": "945.69", 
    "type": "button", 
    "package": "luxury", 
    "visitor_id": "null"
  }
}

You can use event properties as:

• an event value for sum and average value metrics
• filters for your metric definition

Using properties as event values

Split supports a range of different types of metric functions, including the sum of event values and the average of event values.

When selecting one of these functions, the default value for the event type will be selected. If there is a particular value in the properties of the event you would like to use in the metric definition, you can select which property you want to use as the value field. Note that the properties available are based on the properties being passed with the event type that is associated with the metric's definition.  

A property used as a value field must be numeric (e.g., a float or an integer). If you select a property that has no numeric values associated with it and returns a null value, this is converted into zero (0) at time of calculation.

Refer to the Events guide for more information about how to send events and event values.

For example, below is the raw event shown above and the properties passed with the event. While all properties display in the value field, not all of the properties are valid to be used in metric value calculations and if you select a non-numeric property, it is treated as the value 0.

{
  "eventTypeId": "checkout.click",
  "environmentName": "Production",
  "trafficTypeName": "user",
  "timestamp": 1557936519990,
  "value": 0,
  "source": "Segment",
  "foreignId": "ajs-85cb03f2f34af1426d9a2128146ab832",
  "properties": {
    "category": "guest", 
    "packaging_fees": "25.08",
    "discount_saving": "4",
    "label": "necklace",
    "login_id": "null", 
    "page_version":"unit_page", 
    "total_tax": "32.00", 
    "total_cost": "945.69", 
    "type": "button", 
    "package": "luxury", 
    "visitor_id": "null"}"
  }
}

The following shows how the above properties would be listed within the metrics definition builder.

Using properties as filters

Apply a property filter to the event you are measuring

Split supports the ability to use event properties as property filters for your metric definition to condition the event by an event property. You can use up to 20 event properties to filter your event by. Using multiple event properties are calculated as having an and relationship between them.

Use event properties as filters to create more granular metrics and gain insights from a subset of users in your sample. For example, if you are measuring 'checkout.click', you may be interested in analyzing the overall checkout clicks but also particular check out clicks where the user has selected a particular item on your site. As shown below, this could be achieved if there is a property in the event type describing the item type.

Apply a property filter to the has done event your filtering your metric by

Metric filtering can help you improve the sensitivity of your metric by refining the sample used in the analysis. In addition, you can apply a property filter to your metric filter, i.e., apply a property filter to the event type you are using to filter your overall metric which allows you to create a metric with additional granularity. You can use up to 20 event properties to filter your event by. Using multiple event properties are calculated as having an and relationship between them. The same functionality described above is available in the advanced section. An example is shown below:

Event Property Limits

Split supports the capturing of 300 properties per event type, and each property has a 256 character limit.

FAQs

How can I see the event properties for a particular event?

You can access your raw events and the properties being passed to Split by capturing them in Data hub's Live tail function and look to see what properties exist. Refer to the Events guide for more information.