Web activity tracking

Web activity tracking sends two kinds of behavioral data from your website to Engage: shopping cart changes and product views. Engage links that data to a contact, either immediately or later once the visitor is identified, and uses it to trigger automations and personalize communication. Visitor activity is tracked whether or not they are identified. Anonymous activity is stored in the browser and connected to a contact as soon as that visitor is identified.

What it enables

Feature	What it needs
Abandoned cart — trigger an automation when a cart is left behind	A product feed, the tracking script, and cart tracking
Abandoned browse — trigger an automation when a visitor browses but adds nothing to the cart	Everything for abandoned cart, plus product view tracking
Products of interest — a per-contact list of up to 25 products, usable in segmentation	A product feed, the tracking script, and product view tracking
Product recommendations — personalized recommendations in emails	Products of interest, which are combined with purchase and return history

More about abandoned cart and abandoned browse

How the data reaches Engage

Your site calls a tracking method (cart(), emptyCart() or productview()) whenever the visitor changes their cart or views a product.
The method sends an HTTP POST to the Collect endpoint.
Engage waits for the cart or session to go quiet for 30 minutes, then treats it as abandoned.
If the activity is connected to a contact, Engage enriches it with data from the product feed and triggers the matching automation. Activity still not connected to any contact at that point is filtered out.

Two ways to send the data

The two ways of implementing tracking are:

With the tracking script
With the tracking API

Almost all implementations use the tracking script. However the tracking API also exists for cases where a script can’t be used, but this shifts more of the work onto you.

	Tracking script	Tracking API
Anonymous visitors	Tracked	Not possible — `contactId` is required
Identified visitors	Tracked	Tracked
`sessionId`	Added automatically	You must add it to every payload
Cookies and identification	Handled by the script	You must handle it yourself
Identifying visitors arriving from email links	Automatic, from the `vtid` URL parameter	You must read `vtid` and pass it as `contactId`

Key terms

Term	What it means
Client ID	An ID the script generates to represent a browser. Stored in the `_va` cookie.
Contact ID	The Engage ID of an identified contact. Stored in the `_vaI` cookie.
`vtid`	A query parameter added to links in Engage emails. Holds the contact ID in encoded form.
`sessionId`	A unique ID for one browsing session. Engage uses it to decide whether abandoned cart or abandoned browse should trigger.
Collect endpoint	The endpoint the tracking script posts to. It is not part of the Engage REST API — it is used only by the tracking script.
`cartRef`	Your own unique reference for one shopping cart. It must stay the same for that cart’s entire life.
`itemId`	The product identifier you send. Matched against the SKU in Engage.
`locale`	The language/market of the site, as an IETF language tag such as `sv-SE`. Must match a product feed in Engage.

_vaI is _va followed by an uppercase letter I (I as in Ingemar), not a lowercase L. The two are hard to tell apart in many fonts.

Where to start

Configure a product feed in Engage

Cart and product view data is enriched from the product feed. Without a feed for the relevant locale, no automation can trigger.

Set up a product feed

Implement the tracking script

One snippet, on every page of the site.

The tracking script

Identify your visitors

Call setContactId() at the moment your site identifies someone, and understand how the cookies work.

Identification and cookies

Send cart and product view events

Track every cart change, and every product view.

Tracking cart changes

Tracking product views

Verify the implementation

Work through the checklists before going live.

E-com and tracking

Campaigns

Web activity tracking

What it enables

More about abandoned cart and abandoned browse

How the data reaches Engage

Two ways to send the data

Key terms

Where to start

Set up a product feed

The tracking script

Identification and cookies

Tracking cart changes

Tracking product views

Verifying and troubleshooting

​What it enables

More about abandoned cart and abandoned browse

​How the data reaches Engage

​Two ways to send the data

​Key terms

​Where to start

Set up a product feed

The tracking script

Identification and cookies

Tracking cart changes

Tracking product views

Verifying and troubleshooting

What it enables

How the data reaches Engage

Two ways to send the data

Key terms

Where to start