A common question in web analytics, since most tools use a cookie to identify returning visitors. Some tools fall back to IP-address and browser agent, but that will not help either when multiple computers are used.
In some cases website visitors have to login which is a great alternative to increase the recognition of returning visitors. But what to do when you do not require users to login and you feel that they might use multiple computers more than average?
A real-world example from an online insurance website shows you one of the solutions. Based on the conversion per marketing channel the people responsible for online advertising were sure that a lot of visitors hit one of their banners or links before converting. During the order process people have to fill in a specific registration number for a car insurance (legal requirement, many people don’t know this number), which increases the chance that they abort the order process. By proving an email link the visitor can choose to receive an email with a link to resume the order process. Unfortunately it is quite likely that this will be done on a computer at home, while the order process started on a computer at work. No cookie, no similar IP and thus no way to match a conversion with a previous marketing campaign response. As a result the reported ROI on campaigns is too low, because many orders cannot be matched with a campaign.
The solution is to use an identifier which is available in both parts of the order process. For this car insurance it is the license plate number. Before visitors have to fill in the code (which they can only find on their car registration papers) they always fill in their license plate number which shows the premium for their car. The license plate number is matched with all marketing campaigns they have responsed to (Google Adwords, MSN banner, etc.). When they complete the order process the license plate will be stored in the web analytics tool on the order confirmation page. By combining this information with the list of license plate numbers and corresponding marketing campaigns almost 50% of the orders without any campaign information could be allocated to one or more campaigns.
Disclaimer:
Sometimes a little out-of-the-box thinking is required to get valuable insights out of your web analytics tool. Adversitement is a premier European partner of Omniture and is specialized in advanced web analytics projects.
Met vriendelijke groet,
Mirte Romanillos
10-Jun-08 8:00 AM
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How can I recognize visitors if they use multiple computers?
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