Tracking across devices with Google Analytics from a technical point of view

1. Tracking across devices with
From a technical point of view by Marga Rodríguez
Developer at feelunique.com
margaferrez@gmail.com - @margaferrez

2. Cross device tracking -> What’s my User journey?

3. User id & Ecommerce
#1 The usage of user-id feature makes cross device measurement possible in GA. This is the biggest benefit of
using the user id.
#2 Through user id feature, GA can more accurately identify the number of unique users and their engagement
activities (click on links, page navigation, screen navigation etc) across multiple devices and/or sessions, as unlike
client ID, the user ID can exist on multiple devices.
#3 You can attribute user engagement spread across multiple devices and sessions to a single user in your GA reports.
Thus user id helps in fixing attribution modelling issues.
#4 Through user id feature, you can get a holistic view of the users’ purchase journey.
#5 User id is a great feature to segment and analyze the logged-in users, as these users generally engaged with your
website very differently than those who are not logged in.
source: http://www.optimizesmart.com/complete-guide-cross-device-tracking-user-id-google-analytics/

4. How we can implement that?

6. Web
<!-- Google Analytics -->
<script>
(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){
(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),
m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)
})(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga');
ga('create', 'UA-XXXX-Y', { 'userId': 'USER_ID' });
ga('send', 'pageview');
</script>
<!-- End Google Analytics -->
source: http://developers.google.com/analytics

7. App
public void onUserSignIn(User user) {
Tracker t = GoogleAnalytics.getInstance(context).newTracker("UA-XXXX-Y");
t.set("&uid", user.getId());
t.send(new HitBuilders.EventBuilder().setCategory("UX").setAction("User Sign In").build());
}
source: http://developers.google.com/analytics

8. Measurement Protocol
POST:
Host: www.google-analytics.com
v=1 // Version.
&tid=UA-XXXX-Y // Tracking ID / Property ID.
&cid=555 // Anonymous Client ID.
&t= // Hit Type.
GET:
http://www.google-analytics.com/collect?v=1&tid=UA-XXXX-Y&cid=555&t=pageview
source: http://developers.google.com/analytics

9. MP Example in php and Curl
GET
<?php
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => 1,
CURLOPT_URL => 'http://www.google-analytics.com/collect?
v=1&tid=UA-XXXX-Y&cid=555&t=pageview',
));
$resp = curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
?>
POST
<?php
$data = array(
'v' => 1,
'tid' => 'UA-XXXX-Y';
'cid' => 555,
't' => 'pageview'
);
$curl = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array($curl, array(
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => 1,
CURLOPT_URL => 'http://www.google-analytics.com/collect',
CURLOPT_POST => true,
CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $data,
));
$resp = curl_exec($curl);
curl_close($curl);
?>

10. Tracking Your Home with Google Analytics
http://nicomiceli.com/tracking-your-home-with-google-analytics/

11. How difficult is to implement all that?
- Web tracking is much more easy, because the analytics.js by default is
doing a lot of calculations and we only have to send it once during the
session.
- The App tracking is a bit more complex, because we need to configure the
basic data and then send them, good news are that we only need to send
them once per session, and we can keep them in the app memory.
- The Measurement Protocol is the more complex implementation,
because we need to fill in all the fields we need to be tracked in every single
hit.
- You would need a developer to implement App & MP, but if you are handy,
you won’t have a lot of problems implementing web tracking.

12. Look So Nice!!!

13. You need to be logged in to access to
the content
You can access to the content as a
visitor

14. Limitations?
- Can track only users already identified
- First visits, without being logged in, are not
tracked as part of the journey.

15. My proposed solution? -> Cookies

16. Proposed Solution?
- Create a long life cookie with a hashed identifier
- If the user signs in, we do the link between this hashed identifier
and the customer id
- When user logs out, the cookie is keeped on the browser
- If user logs in in different device, we’re going to store the same
user hash id at the device
- Add the hashed identifier to our GA hits as a userid.

22. Does it solves everything?
- Users that are not registered in our site
- Users that don’t log in at every device they use
- Users that really love removing cache & cookies
- Devices used for many customer of our site

23. Other ideas?
- Try to encourage the user to log in
(BestPractices)
- Autologin user when lands our site
(social media - custom system)

24. Is it worth all this work to analyse all devices?

25. Thanks
Marga Rodríguez
Developer at feelunique.com
https://github.com/margaferrez
margaferrez@gmail.com - @margaferrez