how to track unique visitors in web 2.0 analytics

How many
heads does
a hydra
have?
HOW TO TRACK UNIQUE
VISITORS IN WEB 2.0
ANALYTICS
June 2013
ANALYTICS & MEASUREMENT
www.bitbang.com +39.051.5875314 info@bitbang.com
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ANALYTICS
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In an ideal world, web analytics tools would be able
to track unique visitors without occurring in data accuracy
doubts. In the real world, every customer has one site
with a unique domain (www.customersite.com) and the
tracking tool is based on first party cookies to bypass the
browsers’ security settings. In this scenario, the cookies
used to track the unique visitors are written from the
same domain being analyzed. With Adobe SiteCatalyst,
first party cookies tracking must be enabled. Google
Analytics and WebTrends use by default first party cookies
and that’s a great point of advantage of these tools).
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Therefore, the only elements that could affect / inflate
the counting of unique visitors are the cookies deletion
(by the users or by cleaning tools) and the usage of
different browsers, different PCs or different devices by
the same visitor. I’m assuming, of course, that in this
world nobody disables cookies and Javascript!
THE DARK SIDE
OF THE MOON
Anyway, even in our perfect world there would be a critical
point: the count of unique visitors related to the
time range of the analysis. Consider how the unique
visitors metric can change its meaning with different time
periods of analysis: for a specific day, I would know the
number of my daily unique visitors, but if I select one week, I
could see both my weekly unique visitors and the sum of the
daily unique visitors; in the same way if I select one month, I
could see the monthly, the sum of the weekly, or the sum of
the daily unique visitors.
The point here is the purpose of the analysis. Another weak
point is detected when we analyze a custom period. How can
we be sure about the number of unique visitors for example
from Monday to Wednesday? Tools of Web Analytics like
Google Analytics, SiteCatalyst are “intelligent”, so are able to
deduplicate the visitors for custom periods. Anyone would
love this standard of perfection.
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THE HARD
TRUTH
Unluckily the real world is more something like this: one site with several
domains (e.g. one domain for each country, www.mysite.com, www.mysite.it,
www.mysite.es) and several sub-domains (e.g. minisites, minisite.mysite.com).
The biggest issue in this scenario is not being able to activate the first party
cookies tracking accurate count of unique visitors crossing from mysite.com to
mysite.it).
How can the tools manage this picture?
Google Analytics provides a custom page code (_setDomainName() and _link()
functions) that is able to deduplicate visits and visitors. Also, if you want to track
two groups of sub-domains of the same domain (e.g. aaa.mysite.it and
bbb.mysite.it in a profile, ccc.mysite.it and ddd.mysite.it in another profile), you
can simply use _setDomainName(“.mysite.it”) for both profiles.
The profiles will be managed with the use of filters. Adobe SiteCatalyst gives two
options: the first requires to activate the cross third party cookies (2o7.net), the
second to use the first party cookies only on the main site (e.g.
www.mysite.com) and the other sites require to write the same cookie as a
third party cookie. This last solution is working fine on our customers.
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The worst case of the real world scenario is when a unique
visitor browses mysite.com and mysite.it during the same
session using a PC in the morning, his mobile device in the
afternoon and the iPad in the evening!
This world can be more complex than what we might think!
In this case, the Marketing Department requires to
differentiate more the online experience and to embrace the
growing need for online interactions (PC, mobile, iPad).
These requirements can be translated into a need to identify
both cross browser and cross device visitor, to make
the web experience more customized.
What are the possible solutions in this complex world? Some
customers are experiencing the Local Shared Objects (LSO)
commonly called flash cookies, in order to track the visitor
cross browser. The flash cookie tracking is based on the
concept that when a browser requests a page, it can transmit
information not only about itself, but also about the
computer it’s running on. In this way, it would be possible to
uniquely identify each computer, regardless of the browser
used.
The flash cookie is written in your computer, and even if you
delete your browser’s cookies, you do not delete your flash
cookie, so that if you browse mysite.com using Firefox and
then using Internet Explorer, you are still recognized as the
same visitor.
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We still have an issue about this type of tracking: Flash
technology is not supported by the great majority of
mobile devices, so the tracking cross device would not
be granted.
Another solution is recently coming to light: taking
advantage of the wide spreading of Facebook, the visitor
that uses PCs, iPads and iPhones to navigate both
mysite.com and mysite.it could be uniquely identified . We
are just testing this method right now and the following
steps can give you an idea of how it works:
- the visitor lands on the home page of mysite.com;
This integration offers the opportunity to segment your
- a popup appears to the visitor, asking the visitor if he
wants to Connect the site with his Facebook account
(typically rewarding some discount or special offers);
offer based on the visitors’ behaviour on the site and their
- if the visitor accepts the connection, a welcome message
(a kind of “Welcome Visitor, you are signed in with your
Facebook account”) will appear on the site;
own Facebook information (social-demographic data,
thoughts, and so on). The Facebook visitor ID is the only
keystone that ensures that the cross browser and cross
device tracking works right.
As you can imagine, the Facebook solution is in conflict with
- all the most relevant data provided by the Facebook
profile, as gender, day of birth, geo-location and so on, are
collected in the web analytics tools in conjunction with the
visitor’s behavior on the site;
the user’s privacy, and this is why this solution is the most
- an example of information that can be reached by this
method is a high percentage of Italian male population is
watching the pants showed in home page but only a very
small percentage of them is going to buy those pants. In
this case, it could be useful a direct email program (also the
email address is provided by the Facebook integration)
towards the Italian men, showing a very advantageous
discount to buy the pants. Pretty cool isn’t it?
not be aggregated anymore.
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debated. There’s a trade off between the greatest accuracy
to identify the unique visitors and the privacy that seems
not to be granted. If this scenario takes place, the data will
They would instead be tied to the single specific user: the
web analytics world is switching from an anonymous data
collection to a one-to-one data collection.
WHERE IS THE WEB
ANALYTICS WORLD
GOING TO?
The future is to connect the online experience with the offline
actions, in order to link the online and the offline customer.
A primary key must be identified to tie the two worlds.
When it is found, the golden age will come!
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GOOGLE’S
UNIVERSAL ANALYTICS
Presented in October 2012 during the Google
Analytics Partner Summit and officially launched in Q2
2013, the new way of data collection called Universal
Analytics is able to recognize a visitor regardless of the
used device (even RFID) or browser.
This is possible thanks to the new Measurement
Protocol and in particular thanks to a new parameter
called User ID (uid) and to the fact that session
identification is handled at a server level.
To enable the multi-device tracking is necessary that the
site hosts a sign-in/log-in system. This feature, then,
won’t have an impact on too many websites. Anyway,
the increasing number of Google Plus users is a benefit
in this way (i.e. Android users are already logged in with
G+ credentials).
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Moreover, with Measurement Protocol it is possible to
upload data in offline mode (conversions from a POS o a
loyalty card for example) into Google Analytics.
Universal Analytics uses one single first party cookie
(Google Analytics standard tracking uses four cookies)
called _ga that expire after two years and move the
analysis from a visit-centric view to a visitor-centric view.
Obviously the employment of a new tracking system
implies that there are NO possible connections with the
historical data: it is necessary to create a new GA
property.
There is also a new set of reports specially designed for
the multi-device analysis: Device Overlap Report, Device
Paths Report, Acquisition Source Report.