Cross-Device User Tracking Between Web and App in Adobe Analytics

[Ricardo-33]

Hello,

I have a few question about an implementation that we are currently doing. It is our first implementation across both web and mobile app platforms. Here is the scenario:

A single user (user_12345) has two different ECIDs:

ECID-123 (web)
ECID-456 (app)

I understand from Adobe documentation that visitor deduplication is not retroactive. When a visitor accesses our site for the first time and then authenticates, two unique visitors are counted:

The first visitor count from the generic Analytics ID (ECID) generated for anonymous browsing
The second visitor count from the custom visitorID assigned after authentication

My questions:

1) What is the best practice to track a complete user journey across our web and app platforms?

2) Is it possible to show the user's activity prior to authentication? 

3) Are there any specific data collection strategies I should implement when sending data to Adobe Analytics in this cross-platform scenario?

Our goal is to understand the complete customer journey regardless of which platform they use.
Any insights or documentation references would be greatly appreciated!

[igupta]

Hey @Ricardo-33 ,

I did a webinar some time back which has some context to what you are asking here to do. Essentially, you can use the authenticated value as the primary key to get the ECIDs on other devices and look at historical data associated with other devices. However, you would need to export the data out of Adobe for better analysis...mostly if you have data warehouse tool like Teradata or something. Hope this helps!

Elevate Your Customer Journeys with Adobe Analytics

[jeff_bloomer]

Hi @Ricardo-33,

I also never make assumptions when replying to these posts, which is why I wanted to ask if you are also passing your org ID when sending any links from your native mobile app to web.  This is is a technique I encouraged at Kroger for any of our internal campaign tracking when we were following customers clicking assets containing links that navigated them over to related web properties, and it made it a LOT easier for teams to implement and perform better INTERNAL campaign tracking as well as understand how our customers were navigating from app to web.  Unfortunately, that approach is only possible in one direction.  Until they implemented CJA, I do not believe they considered other possibilities.

[John_Man]

Hi @Ricardo-33 

If your scenario is about totally separate devices, e.g. same person using your app on iPhone and also access the web site on the desktop, the solution would be cross device visitor stitching where the journey of the same person authenticated with say user_12345 on different devices can be stitched. But you need CDA - cross device analytics add-in license in AA in order to do this. CJA also have similar feature. There is a re-play/re-key mechanism in cross device stitching such that user's activity prior to authentication can be covered as well.

But if your scenario is about same device for a mobile app to open a web view, you can leverage the adobe_mc paramter for user journey persistence.

Thanks,

John