How to Debug a Coremetrics Implementation

During a web analytics implementation, or while tracking down the source of tracking errors, its important to check whats being sent to the analytics servers. Coremetrics provides 3 ways to debug or QA an implementation: 1) The Coremetrics TagBar. This is the everyday staple of QAing. Its an Internet Explorer/Firefox browser plug-in that shows exactly what is being sent to the Coremetrics servers. Data shows up in the tool instantly. If you are looking for how to install the Coremetrics TagBar you need to start within the tool by navigating to Manage > Installations > Tools Browser Plug In.

Once its installed, open it up by clicking on the icon in your browser. Open Tag Monitor to make the tags persist, which is necessary for QAing. These are a few of the tags you will look for.

Page View tag: For each page being checked, check that a Page View tag exists and has the right Page ID, category ID, and other attributes. Link Click Tag: For Site Promotions and Real Estate tracking, you will need to check the Target HREF/URL link in the Link Click Tag. These tags will be marked by the text cm_sp= or cm_re.

Note that there will be multiple link click tags, since some are attributed to the physical link in order to populate LiveView, while others populate the site promotions or real estate reports. If the link click tag doesnt have the query strings youre looking for, just ignore them. It doesnt mean the tracking is being sent twice. Validation of cm_sp= tracking depends on appearance of the properly formatted cm_sp= value within the Target HREF/URL(hr): parameter of the Link Click tag. It should appear when users click on the link. Note that the site promotions parameters are tracked via this Link Click tag, not the destination URL in the link click tag or the page view tag.

Product View tag: This is used to track product views and product information. It should show up every time there is a buy now, add to cart, or similar buy action available for a product.

Check that the correct product ID, name, and category ID are being sent, as well as any additional attributes. **UPDATE: I have created a follow-up post that details how to debug Coremetrics without using TagBar.

2) The Implementation Test Tool (ITT). This is a testing interface that shows what has reached the Coremetrics testing servers. Point your QA site to the Coremetrics test servers and then access the data at http://itt.coremetrics.com. Data shows up within a few minutes and gets wiped out at the end of the day. The main benefit of ITT is that you can see the cm_mmc marketing parameters that dont show up in the tag bar. In addition it can be used just to confirm that data is actually reaching the servers, or to double check what you saw in TagBar. To use ITT, perform all the actions on the site that youre interested in testing. Then log into ITT and enter in your cookie ID. Entering your cookie ID isnt necessary but it lets you filter the data for just your own browsing activities, which is what you want. You can find your cookie by setting the date range to the time period you clicked around, viewing any report, and finding your cookie in the Cookie ID field.

To see page view tags, you should select the Page View table. For site promotions and real estate tags, you should select the Parametric Links table. In the Parametric Links table, there are separate fields for Parameters 1 through 4. The Parametric_Link_Type column displays an S for cm_sp site promotions tracking and an M for cm_mmc marketing tracking. 3) Coremetrics Test Reports. Similar to ITT, this contains test data. However, rather than having a test interface, these reports look just like actual production reports, so you can view how the data will look when it goes live. Data takes the normal amount of processing time to show up usually a day. Between TagBar and ITT, you should almost never need to use the Coremetrics Test Reports. It is only really useful if you are testing the CDF (file that categorizes pages and products) or just prefer to see the data exactly as it will appear in the reports.

Alternatives to Coremetrics TagBar

HTTP SNIFFING FOR WEB ANALYSTS WHY? As web analysts we need to be able to see and test the technical details of tags, so that we know exactly how the data is being collected. For Coremetrics, however, one thing that can be difficult about viewing and debugging tags is that the official Coremetrics tag viewer, TagBar, only works for Internet Explorer and some early versions of Firefox. So this post will walk you through how to use an HTTP sniffer to view tags, audit, and debug Coremetrics implementations. Dont worry if youre not very familiar with HTTP sniffers they are just software that lets you see all the traffic being sent from your browser to the internet. There are several benefits to this technique:

it will work for browsers like FF and Chrome, not just whatever old version of IE TagBar currently works with. it can validate what youre seeing in TagBar if you need a second opinion :) the output can be easier to read than TagBar since it both stores the calls and displays them separately, rather than listing them all one after the other there might be some cases where you dont have access to the official Coremetrics TagBar since their tool can only be downloaded while logged into a Coremetrics account. the method here can actually be easily adapted for other web analytics tools. Im just focusing on Coremetrics since Omniture and Google Analytics have quite a good ecosystem of tools that are even better designed for this purpose, while Coremetrics does not for example I previously wrote about tools for debugging Google Analytics, but none of those tools work very well (or at all) for Coremetrics.

So, here we go. HTTP SNIFFING FOR WEB ANALYSTS - TUTORIAL 1) Get an http sniffer (also known or available as web debuggers, packet sniffers, http analyzers, etc, but we dont need anything too complicated here)

Im going to recommend HttpFox. It is a free, simple plug-in for Firefox that works great for this purpose. Download it here:https://addons.mozilla.org/enus/firefox/addon/httpfox/ (Chrome has a built-in sniffer that you can access by navigating to the network panel of Chromes developer tools and clicking on the Headers tab. However, this tutorial will focus on HttpFox for Firefox because its easier to use). 2) Install the plugin and restart Firefox. Activate it by navigating to Tools > Web Developer > HttpFox > Toggle HttpFox (or just hit Shift + F2)

3)

Click the play icon and make sure Start is greyed out.

4) Now the fun starts. Navigate to the site youre checking out. For the purposes of this tutorial, Im going to Costco.com. 5) Oh no! There are hundreds of calls.

6) We need to filter these so we just see what were looking for: the calls to the Coremetrics servers. Type in ci= into the search filter box. This will limit it to just calls with the text ci= in them, which shows up in all Coremetrics tags (more on that in a minute). You could probably choose some other text but Ive found this to be reliable across any site running Coremetrics, and excellent for filtering out the nonCoremetrics calls as well. Now well see just the Coremetrics calls.

7)

You can click around the site and these calls will persist in the top section, with

the most recent calls appearing on the bottom. Click on the Query String tab to see a parsed list of what is being sent to Coremetrics.

8) Now lets look at an example result and dig into it. Here is the first call that gets sent from Costco.com to Coremetrics.

You can see a long list of query strings. Lets go through one by one:
Parameter Description

ci

Client ID

st

Session start time

vn1

Coremetrics library version

ec

Character set encoding

vn2

Coremetrics library version #2

pi

Page ID (page name)

ul

Destination URL. The URL of the page.

tid

Tag ID/typetid 1 = page view tag tid 2 = registration tag tid 3 = order info tag tid 4 = shop tag (combine with action 5 for shopping cart tag, combine with action 9 for order receipt tag) tid 5 = product view tag tid 6 = technical properties tag tid 7 = custom details tag tid 8 = link click tag (for real estate/ site promotions click tracking) tid 9 = link impressions tag (for cm_sp impression tagging) tid 10 = form action tag (auto-generated for forms) tid 14 = conversion event tag tid 15 = element tag tid 404 = error tag

cg rnd pc jv np0np11 je sw sh pd tz cvdone

category. This needs to match an entry in the Category Definition File (CDF) Random # (not sure what its used for) Boolean answering is this a page view? Javascript version Technical browser properties Boolean answering is Java enabled? Screen width Screen height Color depth Time zone Not sure

As you can see, this was a Technical Properties Tag, triggered since it was the first page of the visit. The standard Page View tag and Product View tags would look very similar. If we next add a product to cart, a Shopping Cart Tag (aka Shop Action 5 tag) fires and HttpFox displays the following:

Now we can see some additional query parameters, described as follows:

Parameter

Description

pr

product number

pm

product name

qt

quantity

bp

base price

cg

product category

at

action tag IDat 5 = Shop Action 5 tag at 9 = Shop Action 9 tag

rf

referring URL

Besides these, you will come across Order Tags, Registration Tags, Element Tags, Conversion Event Tags, and Error Tags (deprecated since 2010, but you may see them in older implementations). Each of these will contain slightly different parameters (and a lot of overlap) but the basic method of viewing them is the same. Just for completeness, here are the remaining parameters youre most likely to come across:
Parameter Description

eid

element ID

ecat

element category

hr

href (look here to check cm_sp site promotions and cm_re real estate tagging)

cid

conversion event ID

ccid

conversion event category ID

pr_a1pr_a5

extra product attributes

pv_a1pv_a5

extra page view attributes for use in Explore (will not show up in regular reports)

Again, HttpFox will persist all the calls in the top, so you can click around on the pages youre interested in, and then review what was sent. I hope this tutorial helps you understand exactly how to debug Coremetrics when you arent able to use TagBar.

Master List of Coremetrics Query Strings

This is a followup to the post on debugging Coremetrics without TagBar. In that post we walked through how to access and understand the query strings that get sent to Coremetrics servers while a user clicks around a website. These query strings populate the tags that get set on each page to identify user actions. Checking these strings is a technique that can help troubleshoot and debug implementations of any web analytics tool, though its most useful for Coremetrics. Below is the master list of these query strings for reference. There are still a few unknowns so let me know in the comments if you can identify them (and thanks to Shawn and Oscar for some contributions to this list).

Parameter

Description

ac

not sure

at

action tag ID (at 5 = Shop Action 5, at 9 = Shop Action 9)

bp

base price

c_a1c_a50

extra Conversion Event tag attributes for Explore

cat

conversion action type (1=initiated event, 2=completed event)

cc

currency code

ccid

conversion event category ID

cd

registration code

cg

category for pages or products (used for CDF file)

ci

Client ID

cid

conversion event ID

cjen

JSF parameter enabled flag

cjsid

JSF session ID

cjuid

JSF user ID

cjvf

JSF valid flag

cm_mmca1cm_mmca50

extra marketing program tags for Explore

cm_re

real estate tracking

cm_sp

site promotions tracking

cpt

conversion points for conversion events

ct

billing city

cx1cx15

extra custom fields for conversion events

cy

billing country

e_a1e_a50

extra Element Tag attributes for Explore

ec

character set encoding

ecat

element category

eid

element ID

em

email address

fi

form inputs

fo

not sure (form related)

ha1

not sure

hr

href

je

Boolean answering is Java enabled?

jv

Javascript version

lp

landing page

nm

not sure

np015

technical browser properties

o_a1o_a50

extra Order Tag attributes for Explore

on

order number

or11

extra order attributes

osk

order SKU

pc

Boolean answering is this a page view?

pd

Color depth

pflg

product or page element? (product = 1, page = 0)

pi

Page ID (page name)

pm

product name

pr

product number

pr_a1pr_a50

extra Product View tag attributes for Explore

pv_a1pv_a50

extra Page View tag attributes for Explore

qt

quantity

rf

referring URL

rg1rg50

extra Registration Tag attributes for Explore

rnd

Random # (not sure what its used for)

rs

not sure

s_a1s_a50

extra Shop Tag attributes for Explore

sa

billing state

se

search start page

sg

shipping

sh

Screen height

sr

# of search results

st

Session start time

sw

Screen width

sx11

extra custom shop fields

ti

not sure

tid

Tag ID/type:

tid 1 = page view tag

tid 2 = registration tag

tid 3 = order info tag

tid 4 = shop tag (+action 5 =shopping cart tag, +action 9 = order receipt tag)

tid 5 = product view tag

tid 6 = technical properties tag

tid 7 = custom details tag

tid 8 = link click tag (for real estate/ site promotions click tracking)

tid 9 = link impressions tag (for cm_sp impression tagging)

tid 10 = form action tag (auto-generated for forms)

tid 14 = conversion event tag

tid 15 = element tag

tid 404 = error tag

tr

total revenue

tz

Time zone

ul

Destination URL. The URL of the page.

vn1

Coremetrics library version

vn2

Coremetrics library version #2

zp

not sure