How To Get Website Visitor Information

• March 19, 2025

Reading Time: 9 minutes

When we talk about “getting website visitor information,” it typically refers to the process of collecting data about the people who visit your website. This information can range from basic traffic metrics to more detailed insights about visitor behavior.

For B2B companies, this type of website visitor tracking extends to identifying specific businesses or users, capturing their customer journey, and understanding their engagement patterns. With the right tools and methods, this information can change how you interact with your website’s visitors, converting them into opportunities, and improving both user experience and lead qualification. In this article, we are going to take a deeper look at common questions we come across and provide you with a quick overview of the possibilities.

Before we start, just to set the right kind of expectation, with Salespanel these are the types of website visitor data you would be capturing (with a simple 2-minute onboarding process. Read more on the implementation of Salespanel tracking code).

1. Basic Traffic Data: This includes the number of visitors, page views, session duration, and bounce rates. This data is available in aggregate terms and for each user level. These data points are also available in segmentation and scoring modules.
   
2. Demographic Information: This can include the geographical location, HQ locations, language, browser type, and device used by visitors. It helps you understand who your audience is and how they access your site.
   
3. Behavioral Data: This covers the paths visitors take through your site, the pages they view, the links they click on, how much time they spend on something, and their interactions with site elements. This data can be important in how users engage with your content and what drives their actions.
   
4. Conversion Data: This tracks when visitors complete specific actions, like signing up for a newsletter, downloading a white paper, or making a purchase. It’s vital for measuring the effectiveness of your website and your marketing campaigns. Unlike other complex and hard-to-work-with software, in Salespanel you can create and track your goals dynamically without having the need to define them in advance.
   
5. Source and Channel Data: Knowing how visitors find your site—whether through search engines, social media, direct traffic, or referral links. Using this data in segmentation.
   
6. Individual Visitor Tracking: Website visitor tracking might extend to the identification of individual companies or users, collecting contact information, and understanding their specific interests based on their site behavior. This is also known as first-party buyer intent data in the marketing parlance.
   

Can We Actually Identify An Individual?

Can we actually identify individuals as soon as they land on our website? Yes and no – it depends on the context you are asking this question. Let’s dive in:

Yes:

1. For B2B contexts, you can often identify the company or organization associated with a visitor using IP address identification techniques. Some advanced tools (like Salespanel) and platforms allow for further identification, potentially pinpointing specific individuals within that company, especially if they have interacted with your website by filling out forms or signing in. Salespanel works with your favorite consent management platform ensuring you stay compliant with all kinds of privacy frameworks while doing this.
   
2. Additionally, if users are logged into your site or engage in ways that require them to enter personal information (like subscribing to a newsletter or filling up a lead magnet while downloading a resource), you can directly gather individual data.

The common theme here is you always have the consent and a business context to process this kind of individual data.

No:

For general website traffic where visitors do not log in or provide personal information directly, it’s usually not possible to identify them individually due to privacy laws and internet protocols.

In many regions, particularly under regulations like GDPR in the European Union, collecting personally identifiable information without explicit consent is restricted.

Now, about the third kind

Some platforms claim they can identify individual website visitors without them submitting any information directly, typically through techniques like browser fingerprinting or utilizing third-party cookies. Browser fingerprinting involves collecting data from a user’s browser settings and hardware information to create a unique identifier for that user. While that’s not a problem, however, to use it as a unique identifier across the internet for the purpose of revealing the actual identity is a bit of shady work.

Usage of third-party cookies has always been very common in the advertising industry and among social media platforms. They are used to show you personalized ads. Essentially, they know your preferences but use them to show you personalized ads while keeping you anonymized. However, revealing individual identities goes one step further since it doesn’t keep your identity anonymized at all. Thus, they break the most important layer of privacy.

So overall, these platforms have a nexus of unique identifiers which can track individuals across websites and they can share this information with you. What is lesser known is this approach doesn’t work in most parts of the world except the USA.

In the European Union, for example, under GDPR, using such techniques without explicit user consent can be illegal. GDPR requires transparency about data collection practices and the purpose of data processing, along with obtaining clear consent from users.

In the United States, the rules can be less stringent, but even there states like California have implemented privacy laws, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which give consumers rights over the personal information collected about them.

And other regions may have their own rules, often requiring some level of user consent or at least notification that tracking technologies are being used.

So you have to be very careful while working with such vendors and you need to be aware of potential pitfalls to avoid potential legal issues.

Rely On Your Own First-Party Data Instead

First-party data refers to the data collected directly from your visitors and customers through their interactions with your website. It includes actions like page views, form submissions, and other direct engagements. Because this data comes straight from the source (the visitors themselves), it is highly reliable and relevant.

Salespanel enhances the first-party data by adding additional context and details to the visitor profiles. This could include demographic information, company details (in a B2B context), and other relevant data that helps paint a more complete picture of who the visitors are.

By examining the behavioral data, such as which pages a visitor looks at and how they interact with content, Salespanel can determine a visitor’s potential buying intent. For example, a visitor spending a lot of time on product comparison pages or viewing pricing information might be closer to a purchasing decision.

So we are qualifying leads in real-time effectively. This means that as soon as a visitor shows enough interest or buying signals on your website, they can be automatically flagged as a qualified lead and routed to the appropriate sales team. This process not only speeds up the sales cycle but also ensures that the sales team focuses on leads with the highest conversion potential.

How To Get Started With Salespanel

Getting started with Salespanel is straightforward and can be done in just a few quick steps. Here’s a simple guide on how to begin:

1. Install the Tracking Code: The first step is to install the Salespanel tracking code on your website. This code should be placed in the header section of your HTML across all pages you wish to track. This ensures that every visitor interaction is captured.
   
2. Quick Setup Process: The entire process of integrating the tracking code can be completed in about two minutes. It’s designed to be user-friendly, so you can install it using your favorite tag manager or you can forward it to your website admin team to handle.
   
3. Customize the Tracking Code: If needed, you can customize the tracking code to suit specific requirements or to enhance data collection strategies. You can also use our additional tags to capture additional user interaction such as menu clicks, button clicks, or download clicks if that helps you qualify your visitors.
   
4. Leverage the SDK: The tracking code comes with its own Software Development Kit (SDK), which offers additional functionalities and flexibility. The Salespanel SDK allows for deeper integration and customization, enabling you to tailor the tracking to meet specific business needs more precisely.
   
5. Automatic Identification of Web Forms and Marketing Widgets: Salespanel’s tracking code automatically identifies and integrates with any web forms and marketing widgets on your site. This means it can capture data from these elements without requiring manual setup for each form or widget. This automatic detection allows you to capture leads and interactions directly from your website.

Read more about the website SDK and our B2B visitor intelligence API for complete control of your website visitor data.

Hold On, Does It Work With My Tools?

No, it doesn’t. You will have to get in touch with us for some complex onboarding instructions…!

Did I get you there?…. Of course, I am joking.

Salespanel works seamlessly with your favorite choice of CRM, email marketing tools, and sales tools like Calendly.

Are you a developer? We have REST APIs and webhooks for you!

CRM Integration: Salespanel seamlessly syncs customer journeys and historical activity data with the leads and account records in your CRM. This synchronization ensures that your sales team has comprehensive, up-to-date information on each lead or customer, including every interaction they’ve had with your website. This 360-degree customer journey view enables you for more personalized follow-ups and for better sales enablement.

Email Marketing Tool Integration: By integrating with email tracking tools, Salespanel enhances your ability to monitor how recipients interact with your email campaigns. When a potential customer clicks a link in an email and lands on a designated landing page, Salespanel tracks this activity. This enables you to qualify leads based on their engagement and interest level, allowing for timely and informed handoffs to the sales team. Without this, you will never know if someone who was interested in your product or services actually qualified for your attention.

Integration with Scheduling Tools like Calendly: When Salespanel is integrated with scheduling tools such as Calendly, it enriches the data available to sales representatives before they even speak with a lead. Prior to a scheduled call, the sales rep can view detailed, enriched information about who the lead is and the specific interactions or events that prompted them to book the call. This comprehensive background allows reps to personalize their approach based on the lead’s known preferences and behaviors, facilitating more effective and targeted conversations.

Also,

With Salespanel, you can effectively segment and monitor different types of leads—new, returning, and active—directly from your dashboard. Here’s a brief explanation of how you can utilize this feature:

1. Customizing the Dashboard: Salespanel allows you to customize your dashboard to focus specifically on new, returning, or active leads and accounts. By setting up the dashboard according to your specific needs, you can quickly access the information that’s most relevant to your current objectives.
   
2. Defining Date Ranges: You can adjust the date ranges on your dashboard to review lead and account activities over specific periods. This flexibility helps in tracking performance and trends over time, allowing you to make informed decisions based on historical data as well as recent activities.
   
3. Understanding Different Visitor Types:
   
   1. New Visitors: These are first-time visitors to your site. Tracking these visitors helps in understanding the effectiveness of your outreach and acquisition strategies.
   
   2. Returning Visitors: These visitors have been to your site before and have returned. Monitoring these visitors can provide insights into the loyalty and interest levels of your audience.
   
   3. Active Leads: These are visitors who have shown recent engagement or activity on your site. Focusing on these leads can help in prioritizing follow-ups and conversion efforts.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. We will skip getting into detail about these integrations and dashboards since that will be out of context, some other time!

Final Thoughts

I hope this small primer has equipped you with a better understanding of how to leverage the website visitor information effectively, especially within a B2B context using Salespanel. We’ve explored the nuances of website visitor tracking, legal considerations, integration capabilities, and the practical steps for implementing Salespanel’s tracking.

We also highlighted how B2B tracking goes beyond mere data collection, focusing instead on identifying businesses, capturing customer journeys, and analyzing engagement patterns in real-time. Armed with this knowledge, I hope you’re now better positioned to enhance your website’s user experience and optimize your lead qualification process.

Please feel free to ping us on our support chat if you want to learn more.