Should an arbitrary weight be assigned to events such as sign-up that have no price?

It is not advisable, because the resulting number has no unit and is later read as if it were an amount. The safer approach is to count such events separately and express their importance through the conversion rate to the next step rather than through an invented weight.

Event Value

Intermediate

Updated Jul 11, 2026 Shahin editorial 2 min read

PronunciationEN/ɪˈvɛnt ˈvæljuː/

Event value is a number attached to an event when it is recorded, expressing the size or importance of that occurrence rather than merely the fact that it happened.

The value is a numeric property on the event itself, so an analysis tool can sum or average it instead of counting occurrences, and that additivity is what separates it from a text property. Two uses are common: expressing the real size of an occurrence, such as the number of items in a cart or the seconds of video played, and expressing relative importance through an arbitrary weight. The second use is the dangerous one, because a hand-assigned weight creates an invented unit that later gets read in reports as if it were real value; when no defensible unit exists, count the event and keep the number elsewhere.

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