Help · Audience
Returning visitors
Most people on your storefront are strangers to you. Recognizing the ones you already know is what lets their browsing count for something: the products they looked at and the things they put in their cart land on their profile, where your segments and automations can see them.
Before and after somebody is known
Until somebody is known, what their browser does is kept against an anonymous visitor identifier and is on no profile. Once the browser is known, that earlier browsing moves onto their profile, and everything after it is recorded there too.
A visitor starts as a browser, not a person. Your store gives every browser its own visitor identifier, and the app keeps what that browser does — pages viewed, products viewed, items added to the cart — against the identifier. At this point nobody knows who it is, so none of it is on a profile and none of it shows up in your segments.
Once the browser is known, the app connects it to a profile. From then on, what that browser does is recorded on the profile. What it did before is added too: the browsing the app kept while the visitor was a stranger moves onto their profile at the moment they become known, so a first visit a week earlier is not lost.
Browsing from a visitor who never becomes known is kept for about two years and then deleted. It never reaches a profile.
There is nothing to set up. The app enables its browsing tracking in your store by itself when you install it, and checks it is still on when you open the app. If it ever could not, Settings says so at the top of the page, with the reason.
What makes somebody known
Two moments make somebody known: starting a checkout with their email address, and signing up on one of your forms. Signing in to your store, clicking a link in an email and a back-in-stock request do not.
Two moments, both of them the person telling your store who they are:
- A checkout. Somebody starts one and gives their email address, and that is enough to connect the browser to a profile. If there was no profile for that address, one is made.
- A signup on one of your forms. The browser is connected to the profile the address belongs to, at the moment the form is sent.
A back-in-stock request does not do it. It records the request and the address to tell, and nothing about the browser it came from.
Signing in to your store does not do it either. Being signed in is something your store knows, and the app does not use it to connect a browser to a profile. A signed-in shopper is recognized the same way as anybody else: at checkout, or on a form.
Clicking a link in an email you sent does not do it. The click is counted on that email, and the person is taken straight to the page — the link carries nothing that tells your storefront who clicked it. If they buy or sign up while they are there, that is what makes them known.
One browser belongs to one profile at a time. If somebody else later checks out or signs up with a different address on the same browser, the browser is connected to the new person from then on. Browsing already recorded on the first person's profile stays there.
An address you have deleted with "Never let these addresses back" is never connected to anything. The browser stays a stranger, and its browsing ages out like any other stranger's.
How long recognition lasts
Usually about a year. Recognition rides on your store's own visitor identifier, which your store sets to last a year. The app's one small cookie only hands that identifier to your signup forms, and the app puts it back if a browser clears it.
Safari counts too, on an iPhone, an iPad or a Mac. Safari limits how long a cookie written by a script can last. Your store's visitor identifier is set by your store's server, so that limit does not apply to it. There is no setting to enable for this, in the app or in Shopify.
A year is a best estimate, not a promise, because it is the shopper's browser that keeps the identifier. Somebody who clears their cookies or browses privately arrives as a stranger again, and is recognized the next time they check out or sign up. Where your store asks visitors for permission to use cookies, a visitor who says no leaves no browsing behind for the app to keep.
If your store lists the cookies it uses, add the app's one: _carpe_vid, an analytics cookie that lasts up to one year. Where your store asks visitors for permission, it is set only after a visitor allows analytics and marketing cookies. It is never set for a visitor who has opted out of the sale of their data. When a visitor withdraws either permission or opts out, it is removed right away if the app's browsing tracking runs on that page, and otherwise on the next page that shows one of your forms. Until then it stays in their browser.
Each device is its own browser. A person who checks out on their laptop and comes back later on their iPhone is a stranger on the iPhone until they check out or sign up there too. When they do, both browsers point at the same profile.
The browser inside a social app is its own browser too. A shopper who taps through to your store from Instagram or TikTok is browsing inside that app, and it keeps its own cookies apart from Safari. Whether it keeps them from one day to the next is up to the app, so expect people arriving that way to be recognized less often.
Recognized is not consent
Recognizing somebody tells you who they are. It says nothing about whether they want your email. An address typed at checkout is not a yes to marketing, and the profile it makes carries no consent until the person gives it — by ticking your store's marketing box, or by signing up on one of your forms.
Every email you send checks consent at the moment it goes out, whatever the app knows about who somebody is. The Consent help page has the whole of it.
A profile made from a checkout is confirmed, because your store's own record of the checkout backs up the address. That record usually arrives within seconds; if the browser gets there first, the profile reads Not confirmed yet until it does. The Verified identity help page explains the two marks.
What this means for you
Your forms are the part of this you control. A checkout makes somebody known only when they are ready to buy. A good signup form makes them known earlier — on the visit where they are still looking — and it asks for their consent at the same time.
A recognized visitor sees your forms the way your rules say. A new form is hidden from people who are already subscribed, and that rule can only work for a visitor the app recognizes. A stranger is shown the form, because a stranger is not subscribed to anything. The Who sees a form, and when help page covers who sees a form and when it opens.