Advanced information on Customer ID

User-centric tracking

User-centric tracking becomes detached from conventional cookie technology and thus allows us to recognize visitors even if they use different browsers or devices or delete their cookies. This facilitates a better measurement and delimitation of visitor information.

User behavior has changed considerably in recent years as the mobile sector, among other things, has gained enormous importance. Long gone are the days in which online shops and news portals were used almost exclusively via local desktop computers. Nowadays, most consumers use the Internet on the go via their smartphones or tablets - and the rising trend is continuing. Modern tracking must take this into account. With the conventional cookie technology, the user tracking remains limited to the tracking on a device. A visitor who visits a website via a smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer is measured as three visitors according to the cookies created. Therefore, gaining in-depth data about this user is much more difficult (or rather lengthy) than when a single person can be associated with all his visits. Higher accuracy in the visitor analysis specifies your traffic data and allows you less time to learn more about your visitors.

User-centric tracking now combines cookie and database information to eliminate the drawbacks of traditional—and often distorted—visitor recognition and provide accurate information about visitors.

Customer ID

The Customer ID is the basis for all user-related analyses. Usually, encrypted login information (for example, email address) is used as the Customer ID, to which additional information can be added as categories. However, any other value can also be used as the Customer ID, provided it uniquely identifies the visitor and is available for tracking on the page.

Since the email address is not passed in clear text to Mapp Intelligene, but as SHA256-hash, there is usually no reason for privacy concerns

The technical prerequisite for cross-device recognition of visitors is the transmission of a Customer ID. It automatically supplements the cookie for a visitor generated by Mapp. Even if a visitor deletes his cookie or uses a new device, he is recognizable by the Customer ID.

The following graph illustrates this process:

Process Sequence

Depending on how many different browsers or devices the visitor uses, several cookies have been generated for him. For each of these cookies, there is an ID; when the visitor logs in, this ID can be linked to the customer. The Customer ID is only an intermediate step so that the visitor does not have to log in every time he or she visits the site. It is used to link the individual user device or browser with the Visitor ID.

The actual number of visitors is based on the Visitor ID, to which several devices or browsers are assigned. If one of these devices is detected, the visit in question is also linked to the Visitor ID. The Customer ID is only necessary for the first link (green arrows); the mapping works independently (gray arrows).

The following table provides an overview of IDs  in the user-centric tracking process:

The Customer ID can be registered for each page request. To use your Customer IDs, you must pass a unique ID from your shop or content management system to the tracking pixel. Depending on your customer management setup, you can use customer numbers, email addresses, and the like as unique identifiers.