How to get source, medium, campaign etc. from each page visit, like Google Analytics does it?

Ilkka — Sun, 03 Mar 2024 18:13:19 +0000

You sometimes need to know how you got each individual customer to your web site. Using Google Analytics, you only know at an aggregate level. You can analyze things inside Google Analytics, but you can't take that information out.

For example. Let's say your users can sign up to a product and maybe start paying for it? Maybe it's a subscription product, where lifetime values need to be observed over long periods of time. Google Analytics doesn't help with that, since it is designed for transactional, webshop-like businesses.

Well, you're in luck. I have just the thing you need.

I've created a library called VisitDataJS that emulates the behavior of Google Analytics and provides the same dimensions for each visitor:

medium
source
campaign
content
term

The library is already quite popular, getting between 5M-7M page loads every day. But for some reason, the github repo is not very active. So I'm looking for more active users, feedback.

Head over to https://github.com/ilkkapeltola/visitdata and check it out.

Yet again, a free, open source alternative to FingerprintJS: ThumbMarkJS

Ilkka — Sun, 31 Dec 2023 11:22:30 +0000

Maybe this time is different.

There simply isn't a well-maintained open source alternative to FingerprintJS. I believe the problem is not in the libraries themselves, but rather:

How easy it is to measure how well they behave in the open, performance at scale
How easy it is to debug an issue
How easy it is to contribute to the project

I need a fingerprinting library for my work, but not that badly, that I'd want to pay a pretty high premium for the market leader. My need is more of the kind of "anything is better than nothing". But I tend to get pulled into understanding how things work and eventually trying to perfect them.

Anyway, enough prologue. If you're interested in a JavaScript browser fingerprinting library written in Typescript, have a look at ThumbMarkJS. Give it a go. And let me know where it falls short.

I already know that mobile phones are the more trickier bit, and unfortunately I don't have a handful of them at my disposal.

There is a Demo page, too, and it logs your fingerprint. Simply go there if you want to contribute to the logs. The logging happens automatically.

I've enabled Discussions on my GitHub, please use it.

DEV Community: Ilkka

How to get source, medium, campaign etc. from each page visit, like Google Analytics does it?

Yet again, a free, open source alternative to FingerprintJS: ThumbMarkJS