Identify Users
Introduction
Our Web-Client can be operated in Identified Users and Anonymous Users mode.
Identified Users mode means that you provide a unique identifier (e.g. their ID or their email address) for each user when initializing our web-client. This is the recommended way to operate our web-client and(see below).
There are however situations where identifying users is technically not possible or not feasible. For example if you want to survey users on a website with anonymous traffic, or if you are dealing with a huge user base.
To cover these situations, Refiner also allows you to run survey without identifying your users, which we call Anonymous Users Mode.
Why we recommend to identify users
Refiner was mainly designed to survey identified users. Identifying users unleashes the full power of our In-Product Survey features. For example, it allows you to:
- Target users based on traits, behaviour and past survey interactions
- Link survey responses to user profiles of your app
- Sync survey response data to your CRM, product analytics tool or customer data platform
In return, operating our web-client in Anonymous Mode has the advantage that no Personal Identifiable Information (PII) is transmitted to our servers. We’ll cover all differences of the two operation modes below.
Identified Users vs Anonymous Mode
Whether you identify your users or not affects various product features of Refiner. Below you’ll find all important differences between the two modes.
| Identified Users | Anonymous Users | |
| Recommended for … | All In-Product Survey use-cases (web & mobile). Whenever you are dealing with logged-in users that can be identified with a unique ID or an email address. | When launching microsurveys on a website where you are dealing with anonymous traffic. Special In-Product Survey use cases where you are dealing with very large user bases. |
| Personal Identifiable Information (PII) | You decide what PII data you send to us. As a minimum, we need a unique ID for each users. You can choose to import additional user traits (e.g. email, name, …) or behavioral data. You can also attach contextual data to survey responses. | No PII is transmitted to our servers on page load or when displaying a survey. You can choose to attach PII data to survey responses if needed. |
| Target Audience | Define Target Audience users based on traits, behavior and past survey interactions (Segment Based Targeting), Language, Country and Devide Type. | No targeting based on user traits or behaviour. Targeting based on Language, Country and Device Type. Time Delay and Page Visit trigger events |
| Trigger Events | All trigger events available. Advanced Time Delay trigger. | All trigger events available. Reduced Time Delay trigger. |
| Recognize users for follow-up surveys | User are reliably recognized over a long period of time across various devices. | Users are recognized based on Browser Cookies, which is less reliable. |
| Data Analysis | Combine survey response with other user traits to in-depth data analysis. | Analyse data using anonymous survey responses. |
| Team Alerts | Email and Slack alerts can include survey response data other user traits. Better control over trigger events. | Email and Slack alerts only contain survey response data. |
| Integrations | All integrations available, including integrations that require a User Id (e.g. Segment, Customer.io, etc.) | Basic integrations that don’t require a User ID. |
| Monthly Active Users (MAUs) Count | All users that you identify within a rolling 30 days time frame are counted as Active Users. Usually the MAUs represents the number of users that logged-in to your app in a given month. | Only users that interact with a survey (see, dismiss or respond) within a rolling 30 days time frame counted as Active Users |
How to identify users
How you can identify users depends on the method you chose to install our web-client:
Select the right survey type
Web app surveys won’t work correctly if there is a mismatch between the operating mode of the web-client and the chosen survey type.
When you operate the web-client in Anonymous Users Mode, it is important that your survey type is set to “Web App Survey – Anonymous”. When operate the web-client in Identified Users Mode, your survey needs to be set to “Web App Survey”.
| Operation Mode | Survey Type |
| Identified Users Mode | Web App Survey |
| Anonymous Mode | Web App Survey – Anonymous |
You can select the right survey type when creating a new survey, or change it for an existing survey in the header section of the survey editor.
