About this Article This document is part of www.WebVisitor.info, a free detailed, real-time website statistics analysis tool. It is available at various cost levels, including a free version and is quick and easy to setup on any website. Visit www.WebVisitor.info to find out more and sign-up to start tracking visitors to your website now.

User Guide: Code Installation Guide

In order for WebVisitor.info to track visitors to your websites you need to place the Tracking Code on each, or as many as possible, pages of the website.

If a page does not contain the tracking code then any visits to that page will be missed. Also if that page is the first page a visitor lands on after performing a search then the Search Terms and any referring links used to find the website will also be missed.

Each website you setup will require slightly different tracking code so make sure you include the specific tracking code for each website. You can get the correct code by selecting “Website Settings > Installation Code” from the within the website home you wish to track.

If you do not have access to the Website Settings for the website you wish to acquire the Tracking Code for contact the administrator of your account. If you are an administrator and cannot access the website settings make sure that you are enabled to access them via the User Profiles management.

Placing the Code within your Page HTML

Once you have located the tracking code for the website you wish to track, copy it and place it within the body tags of each page HTML. The location is not important as no output will be rendered to the visitor web-browser, unless you have enabled the Counter. A good spot is just before the closing tag as it is out of the way and should you need to find it again in the future, easy to locate. This is shown in the example below:

As it is important to place the tracking code correctly on each page of the site please contact Support@WebVisitor.info if you require assistance. We are happy to help you.

Static HTML Websites

If you are building your website entirely from static HTML pages (i.e. you write each page individually) then you will need to open each page using either a text editor, such as Notepad, or any standard HTML editor. This may take a while but it is well worth it…

Dynamic Websites (ASP, PHP, JSP, ASP.NET)

If you are building a more advanced website by using a scripting language then place the tracking code on each of the script pages as you would in a HTML page. However depending on the scripting language you use there may be preferential ways of doing this, include files, web-controls or master-pages for example.

Visitor Tracking with ASP.NET

Users of the ASP.NET v1.0 or v1.1 a suggestion is to include the tracking code in a web-control then simply include this on each page.

If you are using ASP.NET 2.0 onwards and making use of site master-pages simply place the code within this. Every content page will then be tracked.

Suggestions for all other scripting languages are welcome. Please send to Support@WebVisitor.info. A free log upgrade to any that get accepted!

Identifying your Visitors (Advanced)

There are times on certain websites that you know exactly who the person is behind an individual Session. WebVisitor.info provides you with a simple API (Application Programming Interface) that allows you to pass this information across so it can be correlated against the website reports, Session Activity and Session Details for example.

This typically is possible only with websites written using a scripting language, for example ASP.NET, PHP, Perl, JSP and ASP, rather than static HTML.

The following are examples of when you might use the Identified Visitor feature of WebVisitor.info.

• Membership based websites: Websites that require the user to be a member and login to access the website content, for example MySpace.com, MyGolfRounds.com. In these examples although a lot of the site is publicly available, visitors have to login to access and modify their account. Once they have logged in the WebVisitor.info Identified Visitors API can be used to specify that this session belongs to this User.
• Online Shops: If your website has a shop it is likely that at some point you will ask the visitor for their details, typically when they make a purchase. You can use the WebVisitor.info Identified Visitors API to associate the session with the shopper when this happens, meaning that when you view the reports you will be able to pull out data for each visitor who has made a purchase. For advanced users you can go further and store their details in a cookie, so when they return to the website you can associate their new session with their details also.
• Business Applications: If you are developing a business application that is delivered via the web-browser, for example web-mail, cooperate intranet, learning management systems, etc, then using the Identified Visitors API is a great way to keep track of your users actions.

Using the Identified Visitors API

The Identified Visitors API allows you to pass an identification string for a visitor formatted in any way you wish. For example pass across their username or unique identifier, or if you are feeling adventurous, both. This is done by setting a JavaScript variable located within the tracking code, shown in the diagram below:

How you implement this is dependent on the scripting language you use and also your own preference of course. At WebVisitor.Info we use ASP.NET and we have chosen to implement this by rendering a literal that includes the whole user identification block.

This shows the code placed in the WebVisitor.info ASP.NET Master-page.

We have replaced the identified used block with a Placeholder server control. Then in the code-behind if we have a user logged in we render the Identified User block to a new literal, find the placeholder on the Master-page and add the literal to it. This is shown in the following code extract:

There are of course many ways to implement this, so choose one that you feel comfortable with. At WebVisitor.info we know you will get great benefits by setting this up correctly so if you have any questions or would like assistance please contact our support team at support@webvisitor.info and we will do our best to assist you.

Identified Visitor Quick Facts

It is not necessary to set the identification of the visitor at the start of the visitor session. In fact you can set their details at any point during their visit. This is useful as it may be some way into a session that you know who they are, for example when they make a purchase from the shop.

The following outlines the behaviour of the identified visitor API:

• When setting the User Identification variable in the tracking code the whole session for that visitor is associated with that user. Therefore if you set the user details only when they have made a purchase from the shop, their previous page request up to that point will also be identified with them.
• Setting the User identification variable will override all values passed in that session, unless the value is an empty string. For example if you set the user identification as ‘User:100’, then later set the same users identification as ‘Bob Builder (ID:2233)’ the user will be known as ‘Bob Build (ID:2233)’ as value overrode the initial one.

About this Article This document is part of www.WebVisitor.info, a free detailed, real-time website statistics analysis tool. It is available at various cost levels, including a free version and is quick and easy to setup on any website. Visit www.WebVisitor.info to find out more and sign-up to start tracking visitors to your website now.