With DTM you don’t need Plugins! – Part 2

Let’s continue on the journey and replace one more plugins with DTM goodness.

I even get to introduce an almost hidden feature!

getVisitNum

I was slightly disappointed last time because I couldn’t find an easy way of replacing getVisitNum. This plugin keeps track of how often someone comes to the site. Very useful for segmentation purposes.

The plugin really does two things: maintain the number of visits in a cookie (which means increasing the number at the start of a visit), and providing the current number so we can track it into a “variable” of our choice.

I knew that reading the visit number from a cookie was easy: just make a Data Element based on the cookie.

But would I have to add some custom logic to manage the visit number? Where exactly?

Turns out the answer is no! I don’t have to! DTM provides everything I need, although it is hidden away a little bit.

When you make a rule, you can add a condition based on the number of visits. Oh. So DTM actually does keep track of visits for me? Cool!

Can I read that value somewhere? I couldn’t find it.

Then my colleague Anna pointed me the right way: the visit number is only handled by DTM if I actually have a rule with a condition based on “Sessions” (aka Visits) in my setup. Otherwise it doesn’t care.

But if I do have a rule with such a condition, it will write a cookie (“_sdsat_session_count”)! Heureka!

So, let’s set up a rule with a condition, like so:

Now if we push that live or use the “DTM Switch plugin” to check the staging version, we should see a new cookie on our site.

Success!

All we need now is a Data Element that reads that cookie:

Use that Data Element with the Analytics variable that you currently use with the getVisitNum plugin:

And Bob’s your uncle!

Bonus

For added bliss, you could add custom Javascript that reads the existing cookie and bootstraps the new one, so the visit number wouldn’t start at 1 for everyone.

In my s_code.js file, I was assigning the prop like so:

No parameter on the getVisitNum plugin means that the plugin will store the visit number in a cookie called “s_vnum”.

So all we need to do is read that value from the “s_vnum” cookie and write it into the “_sdsat_session_count” cookie before DTM uses that cookie for the first time to populate our variable.

My guess would be that placing such code into a sequential Javascript block at page top should work.

Don’t forget to delete the “s_vnum” cookie! You want to transfer the visit number once only.