Tracking offline data
When a user visits your site, Yandex.Metrica collects information about the user's characteristics, behavior on the site, goals completed, and so on. But your business may have other important information that it collects apart from the site, such as payments, calls, and so on. You can transmit this data to Yandex.Metrica and link the behavior of your customers on the site to their actions offline.
Transmitting offline data can help you to:
- Connect users' online and offline history to get a better view of the conversion funnel.
- Use offline data for advertising: create segments for advertising in Yandex.Direct, including targeting new users with look-alike technology available in the Yandex.Audience service.
You can transmit the following types of offline data:
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Offline conversions (for instance, information about orders that were created on the site and paid for in the office). You can send the data in a CSV file in the Yandex.Metrica web interface, or using the API.
More information about transmitting data in the web interface
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Information about calls (this information is different from Target Call data). This information is usually available from the call tracking service your company uses. More information about transmitting data.
To link offline data to site users and add it to sessions, Yandex.Metrica assigns an identifier to each user – the ClientID. At the same time, you might be using your own system for identifying users. For Yandex.Metrica, your identifier is called UserID.
If you decided to use ClientID and you are transmitting offline data, you need to first get the IDs using the getClientID method, then send them with the other data in the CSV file.
If you are using your own identifiers, you need to send them to Yandex.Metrica using the setUserID method in order to associate the UserIDs with the ClientIDs. Then send the UserIDs with the other data in the CSV file.
The site user ID is associated with the ClientID for a site visitor only if this method was called during the session. To get more complete statistics, we recommend waiting some time until a larger volume of data is transmitted to Yandex.Metrica.
When working with offline data for either conversions or calls, you need to first enable a longer period for conversion tracking.
Extending the conversion tracking period
The option Enable extended conversion window increases the time interval during which session data can be changed in Yandex.Metrica. This includes adding information about offline conversions or calls.
By default, new data (including offline conversions and calls) can be added to the session for 16 hours after it ends. This makes it possible to correct the information about a session in the Yandex.Metrica database, when necessary (for example, to add new pageviews or adjust the session length). After 16 hours, the session data can't be changed.
There is normally a difference of more than 16 hours between offline and online actions. So in order to add offline data for sessions, you need to use the extended conversion window of 21 days. This means that data about an offline conversion is added to a session in Yandex.Metrica if 21 days or less have passed since the user's last session on the site when the file with offline conversion data is processed.
Offline conversions and calls are added to the user's session that directly preceded them. For example, the user had three sessions: March 1, March 5, and March 11. On March 10, this user paid for an order at a retail store, and this date was registered in the CRM. On March 20, the manager sent the data to Yandex.Metrica. The order paid for on March 10 was added to the customer's site session from March 5.
You can also enable and disable this option via the Yandex.Metrica API: