Goal using event action count much lower than custom event count

Reports and working with data
1

Hey everyone,

We’re seeing discrepancy between a custom event counts and custom conversion goals that share the exact same filter logic.

Despite using the same filtering logic, the totals in my dashboard don’t align:

  • Custom Event count is 64% higher than Goal Conversion count
  • We’ve tried to toggle “Allow multiple goals per session” settings, yet the number remain still the same

Not sure if it’s some kind of bugs or are there additional configurations needed to make to to make sure the two numbers are aligned.

Happy to share more data / account details if a Piwik Pro specialist could assist helping with this. Thanks!

2

Hi! Could you share the configuration of both the custom event and the goal? Did you leave “allow multiple goals per session” turned on for some time? How did the data look then?

3

Hi Sara,

Configuration of both custom event and goal here:

  • Goal
    • Event Type: Send Custom Event
    • Condition: Event action contains “conversion_event” (event name anonymised)
  • Custom Tracking
    • Metric: Custom Events
    • Condition : Custom event action contains “conversion_event” (event name anonymised)

We did not leave “allow multiple goals per session” turn on - it was off by default tho - are we supposed to turn it on for both numbers to match? Thanks

4

Thanks for the clarification!

If you want the numbers to match, the goal should have “allow multiple goals per session” turned on.

Your custom event is tracked every single time it happens, while the conversion is only tracked once per session.

5

Hey Sara,

Thank you for your response. Just wanted to clarify: when we turn on “allow multiple goals per session” - will the numbers recorded before without toggling on be updated as well? Or the numbers recorded in the past would still remain the same?

Thanks

6

It won’t affect historical data, only the data recorded after it was turned on.

7

Thanks Sarah - I just checked the data after toggling on the goal and both numbers seem to match.

I assume there’s no way to retroactively update the historical goal data within the platform itself - but do you have any recommendations or best practices (i.e. use custom event counts instead of goal conversions) for reporting on the past period where the numbers don’t match? Thanks

8

Unfortunately, toggling this setting doesn’t affect historical data. For reporting on the past period, if you want to see the total number of events, even the repeated ones (multiple per session), you can use the custom event counts instead of goal conversions. The goal conversions for that period will only include one per session.