Overview
Purpose: Understand the three types of variables and why the distinction matters.
Who this page is for
| Audience | Why it matters to you |
|---|---|
| Everyone new to Adobe Analytics | Your first real bottleneck lives here |
| Implementation engineers | Translate variable decisions into code |
The three kinds of things you can send
Everything you send to Adobe Analytics falls into one of three buckets:
| Bucket | Answers | Examples | Variable types |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dimensions | "What?" / "Which?" | Page name, search term, form name, member segment | props, eVars, out-of-box dimensions |
| Metrics | "How many?" / "How much?" | Page views, form submissions, revenue, search count | events, out-of-box metrics |
| Identity/context | "Who?" / "When?" / "Where?" | ECID, timestamp, geo, browser | handled automatically |
A report is almost always a dimension broken down by a metric. "Search terms (dimension) by Search Result Clicks (metric)." Once you internalise that, measurement plan design becomes: *what dimensions do I need, what metrics do I need, and how do they connect?*
Next steps: choose between props and eVars, then pick your events. Start with Props — traffic variables.