How Visitor Tracking Works
You’ve probably heard of website visitor tracking, but how does it work? We explain how visitor tracking works and disclose the details of how companies are able to identify people and businesses that visit your website.
Website visitor tracking works by placing a small snippet of JavaScript code onto your website, usually in the footer. The JavaScript code collects the IP address of the visitor and looks up the IP address against a database to identify the company associated with the IP. Often times the IP address is the IP of an internet service provider (ISP). For example, a person visiting from their mobile phone or an internet café will show up as an ISP. Most solutions help you filter out ISP traffic, to just see pure business traffic. That’s basic tracking 101. Some visitor tracking providers use cookies, which is a small piece of code that resides on the visitor’s browser, to collect information on the visitors buying behavior and track future visits. Other providers use don’t use cookies, and rely on IP addresses only – making it difficult to identify individual people, recurring activity, and build unique, genuine profiles of buying activity over time.
For more insight into visitor tracking check out the other posts in this series:
- Why Visitor Tracking Technology Exists
- What is Website Visitor Tracking?
- Benefits of Website Visitor Tracking
- 20 Ways you can Use Visitor Tracking to “Spice Up” Sales and Marketing
- What Questions Should you Ask your Visitor Tracking Provider when Evaluating a Solution?
