Google Analytics and Chat – Part 1 – What are the 'chatters' doing on my site

In the past few weeks, two of our clients have approached us for help integrating their third-party live chat programs into their Google Analytics reports. One client is using BoldChat, the other LivePerson. By reporting on ‘chatters’, our clients can segment visitors into those who used the chat, and those who didn’t. Then, they can compare things like:

goal conversion rates
funnel abandonments
e-commerce reports

Both chat programs provide GA integration out-of-the-box so one would think the integration should be simple. However, after diving into the integration process, we found out both do not implement cross-domain tracking correctly. Because of this, a host of issues are introduced including:

each visitor who opens the chat window gets counted as a new visitor, resulting in bloated visitor/visits reports
referral information does not get related to that chat
chat sessions are not related back to the site visit, thus losing the ability to segment visitors into ‘chatters’ and ‘non-chatters’

Over the next week, we’ll be releasing blog posts on how to properly integrate these chat programs into your Google Analytics reports.

First up,
What are people doing in BoldChat?

Next, What are people doing in LivePerson?