What is fingerprinting in conversion rate optimization (CRO)?
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Definition
\nFingerprinting is the act of collecting enough data to be able to create a unique profile for identifying individual users. The key phrase here is “identification,” which is why it’s called fingerprinting. A person’s physical fingerprints are unique to them, as is their digital fingerprint.\n
How eCommerce Marketers Use Fingerprinting in CRO
\nFingerprinting has broad applications
and implications in CRO. While surface-level (and easily manipulatable) identification includes things like capturing cookies, IP address, and device ID, fingerprinting is a more robust tracking method that’s harder for the user to block.\n\nFor example, our digital fingerprints collect information and data like the following:\n
\n - Operating system
\n - Device make and model
\n - Screen resolution
\n - Browser type and version (like Chrome, Safari, and Firefox)
\n - Location and time zone
\n - Installed fonts and plugins
\n - Etc.
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\nWhen you look at any of these data points individually, they can’t be used for any type of user identification. However, fingerprints collect a large enough set of data points to uniquely identify users, because the data is aggregated to find a pattern.\n\nHere’s an example:\n
10,000 people are currently looking at your website.\n
\n - 4,500 of the 10,000 are on desktop\n
\n - 2,000 of the 4,500 use Chrome\n
\n - 500 of the 2,000 have Chrome version 91.0.4472.12\n
\n - 10 of the 50 have a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080\n
\n - 1 of the 10 has night mode enabled
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\nWith this information, marketers can identify which user is looking at a website and track them with their digital fingerprint.\n\nWith
third-party cookies dying, fingerprinting could be used as a replacement. But marketers need to be careful of privacy compliance laws (such as
GDPR and
CCPA), as they might be unintentionally breaking the law when creating a fingerprinting data point.\n
Additional Resources
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