User Identification

Identify users to connect anonymous sessions with known profiles for deeper insights.

By default, Vemetric will track the data of your users anonymously and without using cookies. In order to do that, we use a combination of the IP address, the user agent and a daily rotating Salt as a hashed id for each user. That also means that on the following day, anonymous users will count as new users.

But as Vemetric is also a product analytics tool, it enables you to identify users, which allows you to connect anonymous activity to a known user once he is authenticated.

Identify users

To identify users, you can use the identify function of the HTML Script or the NPM Package. When calling it you need to provide a unique identifier for the user. We highly recommend using the primary id of your user in your database. You should call this function after initialization of the SDK, once you know the user is authenticated.

This will create a user profile and from then on, all tracked events will be associated with the identified user. Also existing events sent from the anonymous user session, will be merged with the identified user.

By default, no cookies will be used event after identifying a user. In case you have the consent of your authenticated users, you can pass allowCookies: true to the identify function. This will make the event tracking for identified users more accurate. I highly recommend to use a proxy in this case, to ensure a first-party cookie is being used.

HTML script

To identify users with the HTML script, you can call the identify function like this:

await window.vmtrc('identify', {
  identifier: 'your-user-id', // we recommend to use the user's primary id in your database
  displayName: 'John Doe', // optional, will be used to display the users' name in Vemetric

  // If you have the consent of your authenticated users, you can allow cookies to ensure smoother tracking
  allowCookies: true,
});

Look at the HTML script docs for a detailed explanation of the available parameters. For example you can also pass a data object to set additional attributes for the user.

NPM Package

To identify users with the NPM package, you can call the identify function like this:

import { vemetric } from '@vemetric/browser';

await vemetric.identify({
  identifier: 'your-user-id', // we recommend to use the user's primary id in your database
  displayName: 'John Doe', // optional, will be used to display the users' name in Vemetric

  // If you have the consent of your authenticated users, you can allow cookies to ensure smoother tracking
  allowCookies: true,
});

Look at the NPM Package docs for a detailed explanation of the available parameters. For example you can also pass a data object to set additional attributes for the user.

Merging data from anonymous users

As soon as you identify a user, all events from the anonymous user session will be merged with the identified user. In other words, all the actions the user took before logging in can now be linked to the same user. This gives you a continuous view of the user’s journey from first visit to sign-up and beyond.

For example if a user visits your website for the first time via a blog post, then visits pricing, and later signs up, you got all of that connected under that user’s profile and see how they got aware of your product.

Updating user data

Once you have identified a user, you can update their data by calling the updateUser function. This lets you add additional attributes to the user or update existing ones, so you can later use them to filter and group users in Vemetric.

To update a user’s data you can pass an object with the following properties:

• set: An object containing key-value pairs of attributes to set. If the user already has the attributes, the values will be overwritten.
• setOnce: An object containing key-value pairs of attributes to set only if they don’t already exist on the user.
• unset: A string array of attribute keys to remove from the user.

All of these properties are optional, so you can also only pass one of them to update the user’s data.

HTML script

To update a user’s data with the HTML script, you can call the updateUser function like this:

window.vmtrc('updateUser', {
  set: {
    key1: 'value1',
  },
  setOnce: {
    key2: 'value2',
  },
  unset: ['key3'],
});

NPM Package

To update a user’s data with the NPM package, you can call the updateUser function like this:

import { vemetric } from '@vemetric/browser';

vemetric.updateUser({
  set: {
    key1: 'value1',
  },
  setOnce: {
    key2: 'value2',
  },
  unset: ['key3'],
});

Reset user

When a user logs out, you should reset the user in Vemetric, so that following events won’t be associated with the user anymore.

HTML script

To reset a user with the HTML script, you can call the resetUser function like this:

await window.vmtrc('resetUser');

NPM Package

To reset a user with the NPM package, you can call the resetUser function like this:

import { vemetric } from '@vemetric/browser';

await vemetric.resetUser();