Mobile and Google Analytics

[djhht]

Since I have enabled Mobile on my Shopsite store, I have seen a dramatic increase in Direct traffic to the site in Google Analytics. Typically we have about 800 direct visitors to our site in a week and it has jumped to 4800 per week.

Upon further investigation I see that the Landing Page for these direct visits is
/cgi-homehealthtesting/sb/ss_mb.cgi?storeid=*26c78ba514d7f84da34a1eb024a720651948cc5e52&ss_parm=A6c2c033a360b7c2d437e98e2350201ae

This unusual and inaccurate data about Direct visitors to the site has to do with Mobile, but I don't know why? did I set something up incorrectly when doing the Mobile Configure?

[ShopSite Lauren]

I haven't seen this in stores I have GA and mobile on, but I can tell you how to get rid of it. You can remove the GA code from the mobile pages. The GA code would still be on your store pages, so the redirects that take customers to the dynamically created mobile pages will still track customer information, but the mobile pages themselves won't be included in GA.
1 - Go to Merchandising > Custom Templates > Includes > Create New Include, and name it "EndBody" then go back in and Edit that include file, and just add </body> in the include.
2 - Go into your custom mobile page and mobile product templates, and replace </body> near the bottom, with [-- INCLUDE EndBody --].

[djhht]

Can you tell me what the url will be for a mobile version of the site?

In other words if you enter the site from a google search on a desktop then the url is http://www.homehealthtesting.com/

but if I search on mobile and click the search results, my url displays as

http://www.homehealthtesting.com/cgi-homehealthtesting/sb/ss_mb.cgi?storeid=*26c78ba514d7f84da34a1eb024a720651948cc5e52&ss_parm=A37a584afcc27bdfedfc9dd861b6b8b0e

I think possibly I set something up incorrectly. Can you take a look at the mobile urls? Thanks

[ShopSite Lauren]

The mobile pages are not static pages, so there isn't a set URL to go to. With mobile, when someone comes to one of your regular pages (home page, more info pages, etc) the javascript for mobile detects that it is a mobile device, and runs a CGI (which is why the URL includes your CGI directory) to recreate the page for mobile. The page then only temporarily exists for that customer.

[Jim]

Mobile pages are created on the fly and are not static html pages like the regular store pages are.

The url you posted is probably correct since it is the ss_mb.cgi that is generating the page. The storeid and ss_parm are encrypted data that indicate the store and page that needs to be generated. The storeid will probably be a constant value but could change. The ss_parm would be different for each page/moreinfo page that is accessed.

There is code added to the pages to indicate if the device loading the page is a mobile device and if it is the output is automatically switched to the mobile version of the page. The template tags [-- MOBILE_JAVASCRIPT --], [-- SS_MOBILE_REDIRECT --] out put the required javascript and code. The merchant can add a link using, [-- SS_MOBILE_PC --], to the page to allow the regular version of the page to be displayed if the viewer wishes to see it as a normal page.

I'm not sure how that will affect Google Analytics results but since the pages are being hit from that type of url they (GA) may consider them independent hits. As Lauren suggested it may be wise to just remove the GA code from the mobile template.

[lbohen]

I'm seeing several hundred "Content" visits to the following extensions.

/cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/productsearch.cgi?storeid=*246687a2b4c3b7ca741bc640f0a2791ab143627f
/cgi-audiobooksonline/sb/ss_mb.cgi?storeid=*246687a2b4c3b7ca741bc640f0a2791ab143627f&ss_parm=Abccd2d020e14125bda906501e8f31f81

These are the 2nd and 3rd most visited "pages" on our site.

Are these visits on mobile devices?

Should i implement the fix that Lauren suggests in her email below? Why?

Which custom template or includes in our ShopSite pro store need to be changed?