ConverTastictm

Where are Your Conversions REALLY Coming From?

The User-Agent Part of the Server-Log Entry

The user-agent is the last item in the server-log entry. Like the referrer, you may not have it in your logs. If not, call your hosting company and see if they can add it. If they can't, find a new hosting company. Researching conversions is not easy, and you really need to have every shred of data provided by your customer's browser.

The user-agent is how the browser identifies itself to the server. It is sometimes used by servers to determine how to format the pages that it sends to you. For example, if you are on your cell phone and you visit a website, the server might send you scaled-down pages that will work better than the full-blown pages it sends to your notebook computer.

Use this site to take a look at your user-agent, and to learn more.

Every browser has a different user-agent, and the agent also usually has some information about your operating system and language. While most people have a common user-agent that won't be of much help, there is enough variety to make using it worthwhile, especially when researching a conversion where the customer has accessed your website via several IP addresses. There are many ways this can happen:

    A customer might...
  1. turn their cable-modem off every night
  2. be using a dial-up connection
  3. be using an ISP that employs proxy servers
  4. be visiting your site from home, work, and via a mobile ISP
  5. have switched ISP's since first finding your site
  6. be surfing from an internet cafe

If a customer is using different computers and ISP's, you will have a very difficult time researching the conversion. But if they are on the same computer, you will often have good luck.

ConverTastic has the user-agent indexed in its database. So, you can very quickly get an idea of how unique a user-agent is by searching for it alone. Sometimes you will find that a user-agent is so unique that your customer is literally the only person to have ever accessed your website with that particular version of that browser.

Most of the time though you will need to combine the search with an IP search. For example, you might search for an exact match on the the user-agent and where the IP ends with "aol.com".

Keep in mind that the user-agent of your browser will change after every browser update. So you have to expect that your customer's user-agents will be changing automatically. If you can't solve the conversion with an exact search on the user-agent, you will have make it more general by searching only on the name of the browser, such as "FireFox", "Safari", or "Opera".

Another thing that happens is that many people will install a second browser without changing their default browser. So, a Mac user might be using FireFox most of the time, but sometimes the default Safari browser will fire up. This might happen when clicking a link in an email, etc. And of course, each browser has its own cache of cookies, so you will sometimes see a customer who has more than one of your cookies.