Identifying Users Across Devices

One of the key features of using identities is the ability to identify users across multiple different devices. This is achieved through merging different identities into a single user profile. This allows our system to properly attribute events coming in from different devices to the same user journey, resulting in improved analytics.

The merging of identities is achieved in real time, whenever you send an event containing multiple identities. While you may have multiple levels, in practice this will usually mean the anonymous session id and a more known identity, such as an e-commerce id. The system will examine the identities and assign the lower level one - session id, to the higher level one - e-commerce id. This way, different session ids from different devices will be assigned to the same e-commerce id, thus allowing us to identify the user. The example flow below covers how this works in action:

1. Shopper searches for "dress" on your website - a view event with session id is sent

2. Shopper clicks on a dress they like - a click event with the same session id is sent

3. Shopper adds the dress to basket - an add to cart event with the same session id is sent

4. Shopper logs in - the logged in e-commerce id of the user becomes available

5. Shopper purchases the item - a purchase event with both the session id and e-commerce id is sent

At step 5 - the session id is merged with the e-commerce id and then the user journey can be attributed to the same user. If steps 1-5 are repeated on a different device/browser by the same shopper, then a new session id will be generated, but the e-commerce id would be the same, thus we will be able to link both journeys with the same user, which is valuable for performing future analytics on shopper behavior.

More on how to use identities in events below.

pageUsing Identities