Tracking on a page: Logged in vs. logged out

Kelly Gould

Does anyone know or currently do this: We're interested in how many people visit a page, in particular, our member center and are logged in vs. how many visit and are logged out.

We've been discussing how we could display different information to people that would be relevant to them but didn't want to start a big project if the majority of the people who are visiting this page are logged out. Does anyone know if there's a way to track a single page in both states: logged in and logged out?

Noah Cooper

Kelly,

I've seen this done on Convio sites with advanced analytics tools like Omniture SiteCatalyst, where one is able to define variables to track. Without such a tool, another option would be to use hidden Survey submissions. For example, create two Surveys, one to track those who are logged in, one to track those who are not. On each, create a single Short Text Value question. Then, add something like the following to the page where you want to track ...

]x::

    <!--Not logged in-->

    <img src="Survey?SURVEY_ID=1234&995_7360_1_5500=foo&ACTION_SUBMIT_SURVEY_RESPONSE=Submit" alt="" height="1" width="1" style="display: none;" />

::

    <!--Logged in-->

    <img src="Survey?SURVEY_ID=5678&995_7361_1_6000=]&ACTION_SUBMIT_SURVEY_RESPONSE=Submit" alt="" height="1" width="1" style="display: none;" />

]]

... where:

1) 1234 and 5678 are the IDs of the respective Surveys.

2) 995_7360_1_5500 and 995_7361_1_6000 are the IDs of the respective questions (to get these IDs, go to the Survey and view source and you should see something like <input type="text" name="995_7360_1_5500" id="995_7360_1_5500" value="" size="30" maxlength="40" />).

In this example, the Survey will be submitted on each page view. If you'd prefer only to have the Survey submitted on a unique visit, use something like this:

]x::

    <!--Not first visit to page-->

::

    <!--First visit to page-->

    ]x::

        <!--Not logged in-->

        <img src="Survey?SURVEY_ID=1234&995_7360_1_5500=foo&ACTION_SUBMIT_SURVEY_RESPONSE=Submit" alt="" height="1" width="1" style="display: none;" />

    ::

        <!--Logged in-->

        <img src="Survey?SURVEY_ID=5678&995_7361_1_6000=]&ACTION_SUBMIT_SURVEY_RESPONSE=Submit" alt="" height="1" width="1" style="display: none;" />

    ]]

]]

]

Once you've implemented this, you can just use the count of submissions for each Survey to determine how many logged in and logged out users view the page.