Visitor Stitching in Adobe Analytics a.k.a Cross-Device Visitor Identification | Community
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MartiNZZ
MartiNZZ
Level 2
October 16, 2015
Solved

Visitor Stitching in Adobe Analytics a.k.a Cross-Device Visitor Identification

  • October 16, 2015
  • 5 replies
  • 3950 views

Hi,

Visitor Stitching in Adobe Analytics (https://bit.ly/1q4W0Z0) is not without risks according to https://bit.ly/1lOGtLF:
"The reason I don’t see this working is that it requires a large change to your SIteCatalyst implementation involving replacing the out-of-the-box Visitor ID with your own Visitor ID. This can have some major ramifications (i.e. distorted unique visitor counts) and many of my clients aren’t ready for that type of risk."

I do not understand where the risk is. Does the author mean that for existing report suites or also new ones?

Additionally I have the following questions where I did not find information about:

  • Do I need to specify a visitor ID for non-authenticated visitors as well or will adobe analytics use the regular identification as a fallback if s.visitorID is undefined?
  • If a visitor has multiple conditions in one visit (e.g. unauthenticated -> authenticated -> unauthenticated) how is this reported in Adobe Analytics. Will this result in multiple visits/visitors or will they be stitched (with the first, the last or the authenticated visitor id)?
  • What is the best practice for hashing a user name (with an algorithm that is natively available on standard languages like Php, Java, C#, C++, Swift, etc.)?

Thanks for your feedback!

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    Best answer by Alexis_Cazes_

    Hi Martin,

    I have made a quick test and it seems that when the customer comes to your website when not logged in, the s_vi will be set, therefore the visitorID send to Adobe servers would be the one from s_vi

    Once you set the variable s.visitorID="test123", you should see this value in the param vid in the image request, and therefore the visitorID send to Adobe servers would be test123. NOTICE : if you check your s_vi cookie you will notice that the value is the same as in the first image request, meaning that s_vi is not overwritten.

    Once you logout, you will not set s.visitorID and as s_vi is not overwritten and not deleted, it will automatically use the value of s_vi in the image request. And so on up until I login again

    Best regards.

     

    Alexis Cazes

    5 replies

    Alexis_Cazes_
    Alexis_Cazes_
    Level 10
    October 16, 2015
    Hi Martin,
     
    I believe the Cross-device Visitor Identification documentation will answer all of your questions : http://microsite.omniture.com/t2/help/en_US/sc/implement/xdevice_visid.html
     
    Please also read the article wrote by Jan Exner that completes Adam Greco's article : http://webanalyticsfordevelopers.com/2014/03/11/cross-device-linking-what-adam-said/
     
    Please let me know if you have any question.
     
    Best regards.
     
    Alexis Cazes
      MartiNZZ
      MartiNZZAuthor
      Level 2
      October 16, 2015

      Hi Alexis,

      Thanks! The links you provided helped a lot.

      I am still unsure about the case when authenticated visitors log out. Therefore I extended the visit example from http://microsite.omniture.com/t2/help/en_US/sc/implement/visit_example.html to check if my assumptions are correct:

      [img]adobeanalytics_visitor-stitching_example.png[/img]

      Could you please check if the colored rows at the bottom are correctly interpreted for the red section?

      Thanks,
      Martin

      Alexis_Cazes_
      Alexis_Cazes_
      Level 10
      October 16, 2015

      Hi Martin,

       

      I believe if you send a hit without a value in s.visitorID variable then it would use the default cookie value by default (the s_vi one).

      So when you log out you need to make sure to not sent s.visitorID.

      Best regards.

       

      Alexis Cazes

      MartiNZZ
      MartiNZZAuthor
      Level 2
      October 16, 2015

      Hi Alexis,

      Thanks for your feedback. It is still not clear to me if the default cookie value without the Visitor ID is still recognized as the visitor CID1 if the Visitor ID has been sent before (using the same cookie of course).

      Best regards,
      Martin

      Alexis_Cazes_
      Alexis_Cazes_Accepted solution
      Level 10
      October 16, 2015

      Hi Martin,

      I have made a quick test and it seems that when the customer comes to your website when not logged in, the s_vi will be set, therefore the visitorID send to Adobe servers would be the one from s_vi

      Once you set the variable s.visitorID="test123", you should see this value in the param vid in the image request, and therefore the visitorID send to Adobe servers would be test123. NOTICE : if you check your s_vi cookie you will notice that the value is the same as in the first image request, meaning that s_vi is not overwritten.

      Once you logout, you will not set s.visitorID and as s_vi is not overwritten and not deleted, it will automatically use the value of s_vi in the image request. And so on up until I login again

      Best regards.

       

      Alexis Cazes

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