Setting Visit Inferences

Article
11/12/2009

A visit to a Web site is the length of time a unique user spends interacting with that Web site. Typically, a visit begins when a user accesses a site either by clicking a link to the site, or by typing the site URL into the Address box of their browser. Determining when a visit ends is more difficult. If the user closes the browser in the middle of a session, minimizes the browser, or types a new URL into the Address box of the browser, there is no log entry indicating that the visit has ended.

To compensate for the lack of a clear indication that a visit has ended, Commerce Server sets a default visit time-out of 30 minutes of user inactivity to declare that a visit has ended. If you choose, you can change the length of the visit time-out to better meet the needs of your Web site. If the visit time-out elapses, ending the visit, and the user returns to the site a moment later, the report will show two visits.

Note

In some cases, your server might not log user visit activity chronologically, which can cause data for a visit to be imported out of chronological order. The Data Warehouse can adjust for this up to the specified length of the visit time-out. However, if a visit exceeds the visit time-out, the accuracy of your data will be impacted.

To set an inference for visits

Expand Microsoft SQL Server, expand SQL Server Group, and then expand the server on which your Data Warehouse is installed.
Right-click Data Transformation Services, and then click New Package.

Alternatively, if you are changing an existing package, right-click Data Transformation Services, click All Tasks, and then select Open Package. In the Select File dialog box, click the package you want to change, and then click Open.
On the Task menu, click Web server log import (Commerce Server).
In the Import Web Server Logs dialog box, click Advanced.
In the Advanced Web Log Import Properties dialog box, on the Inferences tab, type a number in the Visit Inferences box to designate the minutes of user inactivity to allow before a visit ends.
Click Apply, and then click OK.

The visit inference is configured for the Web log file import process.
Run the Configuration synchronization DTS task to synchronize your site configuration with the Data Warehouse. For instructions, see Running the Configuration Synchronization DTS Task.

You can now import data into the Data Warehouse.

Setting Visit Inferences

See Also

Additional resources