Recently I was speaking to someone who was in the process of creating an tablet experience for their visitors. At one point they asked the question “of my iPad visitors, how do I find out in what format do they view my site the most in, landscape or portrait?”. I started going through all of the reports in SiteCatalyst and tried to find the answer, but that information just was not available. So I decided to whip a little bit of code that would figure this out for us. I call this the screenOrientation plug-in.

Basically what this will do is it will check to see in what position the mobile visitor is viewing the site in, whether they are viewing the site in a portrait or a landscape view when the page loads, and capture that value into a SiteCatalyst variable.

To implement this plug-in you first need to take this code, and add it to your s_code file near the rest of your plug-ins.

function screenOrientation(){switch(window.orientation){case 0:case 180:return("Portrait");break;case 90:case -90:return("Landscape");}window.scroll(0,0)}

Next in the do_plugins section of the s_code file, add the call to the plug-in to what ever SiteCatalyst variable you want this data captured in. In the example here you can see I am capturing it in s.prop1

s.prop1=screenOrientation();

Thats all it takes. Once the code is implemented, if the device does not have an orientation value the variable will not capture anything, but if the visitor is on a mobile device with an orientation value, the value of Landscape or Portrait will be captured on each page load. You will end up with a report that looks something like this:



To make it easier to access the report I also moved it into the Mobile report menu by using the customize menus option in the admin console of SiteCatalyst.

enjoy!

One of the most common things I get asked to track are specific links on the website. Typically to do that I would use a custom link tracking function. This typically involves adding a large chunk of JavaScript code to each link, or adding a function to your s_code file and then calling that function using an onClick function added directly to the link. That methodology works fine, and I’ve been doing it forever. But that means working with IT to add more code to your pages, something I want to try to avoid as much as possible. So how can we make the implementation of our link tracking quicker and use less code? If you haven’t figured it out by now, we’re going to use some jQuery.

For more information how to do this, please read the full article Custom Link Tracking in Omniture using jQuery.

For more information on website optimization solutions, please visit Keystone Solutions.

Recently someone had asked the question, how do I capture a query string parameter that’s on referring URL? We all know how to grab a query string parameter from the current page URL by using the getQueryParam SiteCatalyst plug-in, but most people don’t know that plug-in can be used to get a query string parameter from the referring URL as well. I once had a real unique implementation that was not using that plug-in and needed to capture that value. I wanted to keep the implementation really light so I decided to give it a try using a smaller bit of code. I broke out a little JavaScript magic to see if I could make it happen simpler than using that plug-in. Turns out it’s not too difficult to accomplish, in fact I got it down to just a single line of code.

function getRefQueryParam(a){a=a.replace(/[\[]/,"\\[").replace(/[\]]/,"\\]");a=RegExp("[\\?&]"+a+"=([^&#]*)").exec(document.referrer);return a==null?"":a[1]};

Its a little function called getRefQueryParam. To use it just place that code in your s_code file, and then call it with the name of the query string parameter you want to capture. In this example I want to capture the value of the parameter forumID= from the referring URL and record it in s.prop1.

s.prop1=getRefQueryParam('forumID');

With a little JavaScript goodness it is an easy value to capture.

Enjoy.

Google Instant Preview, designed to show you a visual preview of your search results, rolled out in early November 2010. You now have the ability to click a small magnifying glass icon next to each search result to get a snapshot of what the page looks like.


Seems like a pretty helpful feature, but how do they do it? Well it would appear that Google has a new spider that crawls the web and takes snapshots of each page in its results. In order for them to get an accurate look at what the page looks like, this new bot needs to able to execute JavaScript. Here is the problem. Since it is executing JavaScript that means it is also firing off the SiteCatalyst code and is being counted as another visitor and is registering page views.

How can you tell if this new Google Web Preview bot hit your site? If you are capturing User Agent you can see it show up in that report:


NOTE: If you are not capturing user agent and would like to, a super simple way would be to use the SiteCatalyst Dynamic Variable functionality and include s.eVarX=”D=User-Agent”; in your s_code.js file. Just insert the number of the eVar you would like to use (a s.prop would work too) and you are all set.

Another way to see if you are being affected with spider traffic in your report suite from the Google Preview Bot would be to check out a Browser report (Visitor Profile > Technology > Browsers) and filter it to only show visitors using Safari 3.1 and then trend it.

We can see that this report suite has recorded about an additional 15,000 visitors over the last week that is just attributed to Safari 3.1. Checking the User Agent we saw earlier, the Google Web Preview bot is registering itself as Safari 3.1.

Now that we can see that the Google Web Preview bot is having an effect on our traffic how do we get rid of it? We could block that bot in our robots.txt file, but I like having that additional functionality available for my visitors in the Google search results. I just don’t want it to execute my SiteCatalyst code. Well here is how to do it.

I call this my bot detection code (real catchy title, right?). I currently have it just set to look for the Google Web Preview bot, but it could easily be modified to exclude other bots that can execute JavaScript. Here is how you implement it. In your s_code file, at the top you will have a s_account variable that contains your report suite id. It will look something like this:

var s_account="dead"

To implement the bot detection code you will want to change that line to include the function call. It should look like this:

var s_account=botCheck("dead")

Pretty simple so far, right? We just added the function call and included our report suite id in it. Next we have a block of code that needs to be added to the plug-ins section of the s_code file:

function botCheck(b){var c=navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase(),a="";a+=c.indexOf("google web preview")!=-1?"":b;return a};

And that’s all there is to it. So how does it work you ask? What it does is it removes your report suite id if it is the Google Web Preview bot that is accessing the page. The SiteCatalyst code will still fire off, but it will not include the report suite id so it will be discarded by SiteCatalyst and it will not affect your metrics.

Want to see it in action? I thought you’d never ask! Check out the page http://webanalyticsland.com/test.php. On this page I have a basic SiteCatalyst implementation, one line of code that displays your user agent, and then I print the results of the SiteCatalyst debugger right to the screen. Opening this page in a standard Firefox browser we can see that the SiteCatalyst code has fired off properly, it has displayed the correct user agent and the report suite id is contained within the image request string.

So far so good. Using the User Agent switcher plug-in for Firefox, we can switch out user agent to the one that we found in the SiteCatalyst report to mimic the Google Web Preview bot.

We can now see that when we use that bot’s user agent string, the report suite id is missing from the image request call. Any action that happens now will not be recorded in my report suite, and when SiteCatalyst receives this request it will be discarded. I’ve had this running for a few days now and have not found any issues, but since this is a pretty new chunk of code be sure to test it out before using it on your production site.

Enjoy!

I hear from a lot of people migrating from HBX to SiteCatalyst who are looking for ways to make that process a little easier. One of the hurdles I see is trying to migrate all of their HBX link tracking that is already in place to a format that SiteCatalyst can easily understand. That is an easy one to tackle. It’s called the setupLinkTrack plug-in.

Other than tracking all of you current HBX coded links, any SiteCatalyst user can get some benefit from it. Here is another great use for this plug-in. Recently I was reading a great article from @adamgreco about learning to track website navigation. It is a really great article and if you have not had a chance to read it you should go check it out. In one part of the article Adam writes “you should have your developer write code that will pass the name of the link to a Traffic Variable (sProp) when a visitor clicks on each link in your navigation”. Well I’m the guy responsible for the tracking code for my website, so how can I track those links without adding a whole ton of JavaScript onclicks or some other server side hacks? This plug-in will easily handle that, without adding the extra server calls that come with the standard SiteCatalyst link tracking.

First take the plug-in code and add it to the plug-in section of your s_code.js file. Make sure you have the utility functions s.split and s.apl.

/*
 * Plugin: setupLinkTrack 2.0 - return links for HBX-based link
 *         tracking in SiteCatalyst (requires s.split and s.apl)
 */
s.setupLinkTrack=new Function("vl","c",""
+"var s=this;var l=s.d.links,cv,cva,vla,h,i,l,t,b,o,y,n,oc,d='';cv=s."
+"c_r(c);if(vl&&cv!=''){cva=s.split(cv,'^^');vla=s.split(vl,',');for("
+"x in vla)s._hbxm(vla[x])?s[vla[x]]=cva[x]:'';}s.c_w(c,'',0);if(!s.e"
+"o&&!s.lnk)return '';o=s.eo?s.eo:s.lnk;y=s.ot(o);n=s.oid(o);if(s.eo&"
+"&o==s.eo){while(o&&!n&&y!='BODY'){o=o.parentElement?o.parentElement"
+":o.parentNode;if(!o)return '';y=s.ot(o);n=s.oid(o);}for(i=0;i<4;i++"
+")if(o.tagName)if(o.tagName.toLowerCase()!='a')if(o.tagName.toLowerC"
+"ase()!='area')o=o.parentElement;}b=s._LN(o);o.lid=b[0];o.lpos=b[1];"
+"if(s.hbx_lt&&s.hbx_lt!='manual'){if((o.tagName&&s._TL(o.tagName)=='"
+"area')){if(!s._IL(o.lid)){if(o.parentNode){if(o.parentNode.name)o.l"
+"id=o.parentNode.name;else o.lid=o.parentNode.id}}if(!s._IL(o.lpos))"
+"o.lpos=o.coords}else{if(s._IL(o.lid)<1)o.lid=s._LS(o.lid=o.text?o.t"
+"ext:o.innerText?o.innerText:'');if(!s._IL(o.lid)||s._II(s._TL(o.lid"
+"),'<img')>-1){h=''+o.innerHTML;bu=s._TL(h);i=s._II(bu,'<img');if(bu"
+"&&i>-1){eval(\"__f=/ src\s*=\s*[\'\\\"]?([^\'\\\" ]+)[\'\\\"]?/i\")"
+";__f.exec(h);if(RegExp.$1)h=RegExp.$1}o.lid=h}}}h=o.href?o.href:'';"
+"i=h.indexOf('?');h=s.linkLeaveQueryString||i<0?h:h.substring(0,i);l"
+"=s.linkName?s.linkName:s._hbxln(h);t=s.linkType?s.linkType.toLowerC"
+"ase():s.lt(h);oc=o.onclick?''+o.onclick:'';cv=s.pageName+'^^'+o.lid"
+"+'^^'+s.pageName+' | '+(o.lid=o.lid?o.lid:'no &lid')+'^^'+o.lpos;if"
+"(t&&(h||l)){cva=s.split(cv,'^^');vla=s.split(vl,',');for(x in vla)s"
+"._hbxm(vla[x])?s[vla[x]]=cva[x]:'';}else if(!t&&oc.indexOf('.tl(')<"
+"0){s.c_w(c,cv,0);}else return ''");
s._IL=new Function("a","var s=this;return a!='undefined'?a.length:0");
s._II=new Function("a","b","c","var s=this;return a.indexOf(b,c?c:0)");
s._IS=new Function("a","b","c",""
+"var s=this;return b>s._IL(a)?'':a.substring(b,c!=null?c:s._IL(a))");
s._LN=new Function("a","b","c","d",""
+"var s=this;b=a.href;b+=a.name?a.name:'';c=s._LVP(b,'lid');d=s._LVP("
+"b,'lpos');return[c,d]");
s._LVP=new Function("a","b","c","d","e",""
+"var s=this;c=s._II(a,'&'+b+'=');c=c<0?s._II(a,'?'+b+'='):c;if(c>-1)"
+"{d=s._II(a,'&',c+s._IL(b)+2);e=s._IS(a,c+s._IL(b)+2,d>-1?d:s._IL(a)"
+");return e}return ''");
s._LS=new Function("a",""
+"var s=this,b,c=100,d,e,f,g;b=(s._IL(a)>c)?escape(s._IS(a,0,c)):esca"
+"pe(a);b=s._LSP(b,'%0A','%20');b=s._LSP(b,'%0D','%20');b=s._LSP(b,'%"
+"09','%20');c=s._IP(b,'%20');d=s._NA();e=0;for(f=0;f<s._IL(c);f++){g"
+"=s._RP(c[f],'%20','');if(s._IL(g)>0){d[e++]=g}}b=d.join('%20');retu"
+"rn unescape(b)");
s._LSP=new Function("a","b","c","d","var s=this;d=s._IP(a,b);return d"
+".join(c)");
s._IP=new Function("a","b","var s=this;return a.split(b)");
s._RP=new Function("a","b","c","d",""
+"var s=this;d=s._II(a,b);if(d>-1){a=s._RP(s._IS(a,0,d)+','+s._IS(a,d"
+"+s._IL(b),s._IL(a)),b,c)}return a");
s._TL=new Function("a","var s=this;return a.toLowerCase()");
s._NA=new Function("a","var s=this;return new Array(a?a:0)");
s._hbxm=new Function("m","var s=this;return (''+m).indexOf('{')<0");
s._hbxln=new Function("h","var s=this,n=s.linkNames;if(n)return s.pt("
+"n,',','lnf',h);return ''");

Next in the s_doPlugins section of the s_code file you need a couple lines of setup.

s.hbx_lt = "auto" // manual, auto
s.setupLinkTrack("prop1,prop2,prop3,prop4","SC_LINKS");

The plug-in will use 4 variables and a name for a cookie it will set. For this example I am going to use props 1 thru 4.

Next we have the actual code that will appear in the anchor tag that the plug-in will look for. It is a simple name attribute tag of lid and lpos. This is what a link would look like with the code properly formatted.

<a href="my-page.php" name="&lid=Featured Articles&lpos=Left Nav">Cool Article Name</a>


Here’s what it will do. After clicking on a link that contains a lid and lpos (the exact link shown above), this is what you will find in the debugger on the page you land on:

The plug-in entered the s.pageName value of the page that the click occurred into prop1, the value of lid into prop2, a combination of the prop1 and the value of lid into prop3 and the value of lpos in prop4.

Lets change up what we include in the actual link code. Lets remove the lid from the tag and just use this link:

<a href="my-page.php" name="&lpos=Left Nav">Cool Article Name</a>


This is what we will get from the debugger:

You can see by not using the lid tag then the plug-in will use the actual anchor text in those positions.

Now lets say you are not interested in capturing the previous pageName value, or the combined previous pageName/lid value. You can just omit those variables in the plug-in setup. Change the code to:

s.hbx_lt = "auto" // manual, auto
s.setupLinkTrack(",prop2,,prop4","SC_LINKS");


You can see I left the commas in there as empty place holders. Clicking the link with that setup and a lid and lpos value will return this in the debugger:

What about the other links on the page? What if they do not include a lid or lpos value? The plug-in will track those also. Clicking one of those links will return this in the debugger:

The plug-in will still capture the previous pageName value, the anchor text and the combined values of the two.

I’m sure by now you noticed that auto/manual setting. Up to now its been set on auto. Let’s flip it to manual and click a link on the page that does not include any code. Here is what you will get:

You will only get the two previous pageName values. If I would have omitted those two variables like I did earlier then it would have not returned anything. If you click on a link with a lid and lpos variables then it will perform the same as if it were set to auto.

If you want to not add the code to the links so you can track all of the links on a page, but you only want to do it on a specific page and not the whole site you can then wrap the code in an if statement like this:

if(s.pageName=='Home'){
s.hbx_lt = "auto" // manual, auto
s.setupLinkTrack(",prop2,,prop4","SC_LINKS");
}

You could also do that using document.location (or a million other ways to identify a specific page).

Since it also grabs the previous page value I no longer need the previous pageName plug-in (useful when using the getPercentPageViewed plug-in).

Enjoy!

One of the biggest things I always hear from people considering moving to Adobe SiteCatalyst is the fear of a difficult implementation. It feels to me that most people think they need to implement everything at once, and that is not so. You can just take baby steps and implement small sections at a time. Let’s get started with just a standard implementation to get things going. I’m going to show you how to do a basic implementation of SiteCatalyst in 5 minutes.

First we need to set up a new report suite from the SiteCatalyst Admin Console Report Suite Manager. That can be found by selecting Admin > Report Suites.

Once we are in the Report Suite Manager, select Create New > Report Suite.

This will open up the New Report Suite setup page. On this page we have two sections to deal with, the first being where we can choose what type of site we are creating the report suite for. I recommend just leaving this set at the default suite type. Since we plan of adding some neat customizations in the future as our analytics needs increase, the default will work fine for us right now.

Next on this page we have five items that need to be filled in. They are all marked with red stars, with the most important being the first one, Report Suite ID. Why is this the most important? Because it the only one we cannot change later. I recommend it should be something you can easily understand what it means. If your site is apple.com then I would just simply choose apple and not something cryptic like 89e7rghv9e7gh (yes I have seen that done before). It actually doesn’t matter what you choose (in case you had your heart set on using 89e7rghv9e7gh), anything will work, but choosing something simple may save some headaches in the future. The Site Title is what you want it to be referred to by in the SiteCatalyst interface, Time Zone is your time zone, Go Live Date is when the site is expected to launch (it must be a date in the future), and Estimated Page Views per Day is just what it says. This number is used by the Adobe engineers to determine what resources to dedicate to your site to ensure everything is recorded correctly. Remember any of these items (except Report Suite ID) can be changed later if you need to. There are other things listed here and you can fill them out or change them if you would like, they are not required in setting up the report suite. Fill out the five required fields, click submit and the report suite is created.

There are some additional things we need to set up before we start with the actual data collection code. Head back to the Report Suite Manager and find you new suite in the list. Click it to highlight it and then mouse over the Edit Settings link. This will bring up a list of additional settings we can adjust. Remember this section. Later when you get more advanced with your SiteCatalyst data collection, this is where you will go to turn on and off variables for more advanced tracking. There are only two items we need to touch right now, and are going to be located under General.

Under Internal URL Filters you need to set what the domain of your site is. On every single page view there is a referrer. When your visitors go from your home page to your about us page, the referrer to that page is the home page. You do not want that showing up in your referrer reports, so this is where you list out the domain names that you do not want included in those reports. Quick tip: If your site is www.homes.com, and you enter homes.com in the URL filter, it will also filter out sites that have that name included in it, for example newhomes.com or cheaphomes.com. Add a period to the front of the domain name to make sure that only your site is filtered, .homes.com. You can also enter the subdomain with the URL in the filter if your site only lives at a single subdomain, or you can list all of them in the filter.

Next you want to hit the Paid Search Detection. In here you need to set up a query sting parameter that will be used for your paid search. Even if you do not plan on doing paid search fill this out any way. It is important in making sure your Search Engine and Search Keywords reports work properly.

We created our report suite, filled out a handful of variables and we are now ready to start playing with the actual collection code. From the Admin Console Home you can find a direct link to the Code Manager, or you can find it from the navigation menu on the left.

In the Code Manger we can generate all types of code for what ever we decide to track. From mobile phone apps to flash video players, all the collection code is here. We just want to generate the simple JavaScript Tracking code. Nothing fancy. Select your report suite, set your character encoding or your currency type and click Generate Code. You will get a little pop up warning you to make sure you know what you are doing or the world will end. Just click OK and move on.

Your code is generated now. Take the contents that are under the Core Javascript File tab and save them in a file that you name s_code.js. Take that file and upload it to your web server where it can be accessed from every page of the site.

Now take the contents under the Page Code tab and paste that to every page of your site, right before the closing body tag. In that code you will see the place marked INSERT-DOMAIN-AND-PATH-TO-CODE-HERE. In this position enter the path to the s_code.js file that you previously uploaded.

That’s all there is to it. This should be easily to be accomplished in 5 minutes or less. We setup the report suite, generated the page code and the s_code and added them to the site. This will give us the basic recording of the site traffic, referrals and visitor information. After this is up and running we can go back and add in some additional elements to the s_code file and the page code to customize your SiteCatalyst implementation to your specific site.

Enjoy!

Do you have a site that uses a hash symbol in the URL with query parameters and you want a way to track them in SiteCatalyst? Well you have come to the right place.

What am I talking about? Lets say you have a URL that looks like this:
http://webanalyticsland.com/#cid=Hash_Param_Test
and you want to capture the value of cid=. The standard getQueryParam plugin will not work in this case. It looks for a question mark in the URL, and as you can see this one did not have one.

To capture this value we can use the getHashQueryParam s_code.js plug-in. What this plug-in does is looks for the hash symbol # at the end of the URL, then looks for the parameter you have listed in the function, then inserts the value in to the associated variable. This works just like the standard getQueryParam plugin, but looks for the hash instead.

Here’s how to use it. Insert this line of code in the s_doPlugins(s) section of your s_code.js file. Make sure you use the correct variable you want the metrics recorded in and which query string you want it to be associated with. I’m using s.prop17 and cid in this example.

s.prop17=getHashQueryParam('cid');

Next enter this code in the plug-in’s section of your s_code file:

/*
 * Plugin: getHashQueryParam
 */
function getHashQueryParam(a){
var QueryString=window.location.search.substring(1);
if(QueryString==''){var WinExtra=window.location.hash;
if(WinExtra.length > 0){if(WinExtra.indexOf(a)>-1){
QueryString=WinExtra.substr(WinExtra.indexOf(a))}}}
var returnValue='';var keyValPairs=QueryString.split('&');
if(!keyValPairs){ keyValPairs = new Array();
keyValPairs[keyValPairs.length]=QueryString}
for(var counter=0;counter<keyValPairs.length;counter++){
var keyVal=keyValPairs[counter].split('=');if(keyVal[0]==a){
returnValue=keyVal[1];break;}}return returnValue;}

Here is an example of it live in action. After you click on the link, open the debugger you will see the value entered in s.prop17.

Enjoy!

Have you ever tried to use a new plug-in and found it did not work? You were probably missing a utility function. Utility functions are designed to work with SiteCatalyst plug-ins. There are 6 utility functions that are commonly used. They are apl, p_c, p_gh, split, replace, and join.

These functions do things like join elements of an array into a string delimiter by a string, replaces characters in a string, splits a string on a specific character, append a value to any delimited lists, and more. THese utility functions are referenced by several standard plug-ins.

Here’s how I do it. I take all these utility functions and wrap them all up in one neat package, and include this as one of my standard plug-ins to add when creating a s_code file. This way not thing is missed, nothing is forgotten and all of my plug-ins will work no problem.

Here’s what it looks like:

/*
 * Utility Functions: apl, p_c, p_gh, split, replace, join
 */
s.apl=new Function("L","v","d","u",""
+"var s=this,m=0;if(!L)L='';if(u){var i,n,a=s.split(L,d);for(i=0;i<a."
+"length;i++){n=a[i];m=m||(u==1?(n==v):(n.toLowerCase()==v.toLowerCas"
+"e()));}}if(!m)L=L?L+d+v:v;return L");
s.p_c=new Function("v","c",""
+"var x=v.indexOf('=');return c.toLowerCase()==v.substring(0,x<0?v.le"
+"ngth:x).toLowerCase()?v:0");
s.p_gh=new Function(""
+"var s=this;if(!s.eo&&!s.lnk)return '';var o=s.eo?s.eo:s.lnk,y=s.ot("
+"o),n=s.oid(o),x=o.s_oidt;if(s.eo&&o==s.eo){while(o&&!n&&y!='BODY'){"
+"o=o.parentElement?o.parentElement:o.parentNode;if(!o)return '';y=s."
+"ot(o);n=s.oid(o);x=o.s_oidt}}return o.href?o.href:'';");
s.split=new Function("l","d",""
+"var i,x=0,a=new Array;while(l){i=l.indexOf(d);i=i>-1?i:l.length;a[x"
+"++]=l.substring(0,i);l=l.substring(i+d.length);}return a");
s.repl=new Function("x","o","n",""
+"var i=x.indexOf(o),l=n.length;while(x&&i>=0){x=x.substring(0,i)+n+x."
+"substring(i+o.length);i=x.indexOf(o,i+l)}return x");
s.join = new Function("v","p",""
+"var s = this;var f,b,d,w;if(p){f=p.front?p.front:'';b=p.back?p.back"
+":'';d=p.delim?p.delim:'';w=p.wrap?p.wrap:'';}var str='';for(var x=0"
+";x<v.length;x++){if(typeof(v[x])=='object' )str+=s.join( v[x],p);el"
+"se str+=w+v[x]+w;if(x<v.length-1)str+=d;}return f+str+b;");

I just make sure that is block is included in every s_code file. Then I am assured that every plug-in I use can find the correct utility function it needs to work properly.

Enjoy!

The Time Parting Plug-in is one of the more popular SiteCatalyst plug-ins available. A standard implementation of the Time Parting plug-in will consume 3 variables. One for Time of Day, one for the Day of Week, and one for Weekday/Weekend. How can we improve this to get more information, and more importantly use less variables? Here is how I have been doing it.

I use a combination of stacking the variables and SAINT uploads. For those of you who are not familiar with SAINT, Omniture describes it as, “…an acronym for SiteCatalyst Attribute Importing and Naming Tool. This tool enables you to download the classifications template, apply attributes to it, and then upload the data, thereby enhancing your SiteCatalyst reports with the new attributes.” This will allow us to upload a lot of detail about any variable you record.

Here’s how I’m doing it on this site. First I am using the 2.0 version of the plug-in and not the 1.4 version that I describe in a previous post. The 2.0 version includes support for Daylight Savings time and globalizes the year. You can find the 2.0 version from the SiteCatalyst Knowledge Base. If you prefer to use the 1.4 version, you can find it on this site.

/* Set Time Parting Variables */
s_hour=s.getTimeParting('h','-5');
s_day=s.getTimeParting('d','-5');
s_timepart=s_day+"|"+s_hour;
s.prop16=s_timepart.toLowerCase();
if (s.visEvent) s.eVar16=s.prop16;

Ok, let me explain whats going on here. As I said before the Time Parting plug-in captures 3 variables. If you notice in my code I am only using two of them. I don’t need to capture Weekday/Weekend anymore. I will take care of that later. The other two, I capture in two blank variables I created, s_day and s_hour. Next I combine the two of them in a single variable I call s_timepart, separated by a pipe. Then to ensure everything is consistent I copy the variable in all lower case to the prop that I am going to use. This next part is a little different. In the eVar I only want capture this value once per visit. Typically a simple getValOnce will be enough to get it done. Well then what happens when the visit extends from one time part into another? In that situation the Time Parting value will be different and therefore getValOnce will capture this as a new value since it has changed. I don’t want that to happen, I only want it once per visit. So this is when I tie in using the get Visit Start plug-in. This guarantees I will only capture the value only one time per visit.

This will return a report that looks like this:

We now have a total of 672 possible options in this report. The next thing we want to do is to classify these using SAINT. I set up 5 different categories to use. Weekday/Weekend (this is why we don’t need to capture it in the code, Day of Week, Hour of Day, Hour Part and AM/PM.

I then created the template to use that contains all of these values.

You can download a copy of the template that I use here.
Upload the template and that’s all there is to it. Do you have more conversions in the bottom of the hour or the top of the hour? How about morning vs afternoon? Which whole hour is the most profitable? Now you have an easy way to break down your time parting with finer granularity, at the sime time saving your self a couple of variables.

Enjoy!