Visitors

Website chat can show you who is on your website right now and what they looked at, so your team can greet them at the right moment and answer with context.

Who is tracked

• The tracking notice is off (the default for every new widget): every visitor is tracked, as described below.
• You turn the tracking notice on: only visitors who open the chat and accept the notice are tracked. Everyone else counts as a visitor, but nothing about their pages is recorded.

What is recorded

When a tracked visitor opens a page with your chat on it, the widget records:

• The page: its address (without the part after ?, except the utm_ campaign tags) and its title.
• Where they came from: the referring site (just its domain, such as google.com) and the utm_ campaign tags.
• Their device: desktop, tablet or phone, and the browser.
• Their location: the country and city, looked up from their internet address when the page view arrives. The internet address itself is never stored.
• Their local time, from their browser's time zone.

It also records when the visitor opens the chat. If you use IconEngage('track', …) on your pages, it records those events too.

It doesn't record what visitors type into your site's own forms, their keystrokes, or anything from pages without the chat.

The tracking notice

The notice is off unless you turn it on. To track only visitors who accept it:

1. Go to Website › Chat widgets, open the widget and choose the Domains & privacy tab.
2. Under Tracking notice, turn on Ask before recording the pages a visitor views.
3. Write the notice in each of the widget's languages, then click Save changes.

The widget shows your notice when a visitor opens the chat, with Accept and No thanks. The answer is remembered in that visitor's browser, so they aren't asked again. There's no option in the widget for a visitor to change their answer later.

• If they accept, the page they're on and the pages they view next are recorded.
• Until they accept, or if they choose No thanks, nothing about their pages is recorded: no address, referrer, campaign tags, location or device. They still count as a visitor and can still chat with you. On the Visitors screen they show as online, with which widget they're on and whether they're chatting, but no page detail. Their opening the chat isn't stored against them, only counted.

Whether you need the notice depends on the laws that apply to your business and your visitors. If you're unsure, ask your legal adviser.

How long it is kept

• Visitors who aren't linked to a contact are deleted 30 days after their last visit.
• Page views and events are kept for 30 days.
• Visitors who start a chat become a conversation in your Inbox, which follows your organisation's normal retention.

Website › Chat analytics keeps its daily counts, which hold no details about any visitor, so a day's figures don't change when its visitors are deleted. A deleted visitor who comes back counts as a new visitor.

What you see on each plan

Location data

Visitor locations are looked up with GeoLite2 from MaxMind.

This product includes GeoLite2 data created by MaxMind, available from https://www.maxmind.com (opens in a new tab).

Related

• Add chat to your website