Performable – web analytics and landing pages

Performable provides a platform for inbound marketing, landing pages and web analytics. Its analytics module tracks individual customer interaction, funnel and e-commerce analysis. Landing pages can be created and designed on-line, and integrated with you existing website.

Installation

To start using the Performable integration, you must have installed the django-analytical package and have added the analytical application to INSTALLED_APPS in your project settings.py file. See Installation and configuration for details.

Next you need to add the Performable template tag to your templates. This step is only needed if you are not using the generic analytical.* tags. If you are, skip to Configuration.

The Performable Javascript code is inserted into templates using a template tag. Load the performable template tag library and insert the performable tag. Because every page that you want to track must have the tag, it is useful to add it to your base template. Insert the tag at the bottom of the HTML body:

{% load performable %}
...
{% performable %}
</body>
</html>

Configuration

Before you can use the Performable integration, you must first set your API key.

Setting the API key

You Performable account has its own API key, which performable tag will include it in the rendered Javascript code. You can find your API key on the Account Settings page (click ‘Account Settings’ in the top right-hand corner of your Performable dashboard). Set PERFORMABLE_API_KEY in the project settings.py file:

PERFORMABLE_API_KEY = 'XXXXXX'

If you do not set an API key, the Javascript code will not be rendered.

Identifying authenticated users

If your websites identifies visitors, you can pass this information on to Performable so that you can track individual users. By default, the username of an authenticated user is passed to Performable automatically. See Identifying authenticated users.

You can also send the visitor identity yourself by adding either the performable_identity or the analytical_identity variable to the template context. If both variables are set, the former takes precedence. For example:

context = RequestContext({'performable_identity': identity})
return some_template.render(context)

If you can derive the identity from the HTTP request, you can also use a context processor that you add to the TEMPLATE_CONTEXT_PROCESSORS list in settings.py:

def identify(request):
    try:
        return {'performable_identity': request.user.email}
    except AttributeError:
        return {}

Just remember that if you set the same context variable in the RequestContext constructor and in a context processor, the latter clobbers the former.

Internal IP addresses

Usually you do not want to track clicks from your development or internal IP addresses. By default, if the tags detect that the client comes from any address in the PERFORMABLE_INTERNAL_IPS setting, the tracking code is commented out. It takes the value of ANALYTICAL_INTERNAL_IPS by default (which in turn is INTERNAL_IPS by default). See Identifying authenticated users for important information about detecting the visitor IP address.

Embedding a landing page

You can embed a Performable landing page in your Django website. The performable_embed template tag adds the Javascript code to embed the page. It takes two arguments: the hostname and the page ID:

{% performable_embed HOSTNAME PAGE_ID %}

To find the hostname and page ID, select Manage ‣ Manage Landing Pages on your Performable dashboard. Select the landing page you want to embed. Look at the URL in your browser address bar; it will look like this:

http://my.performable.com/s/HOSTNAME/page/PAGE_ID/

(If you are placing the hostname and page id values in the template, do not forget to enclose them in quotes or they will be considered context variable names.)


Thanks go to Performable for their support with the development of this application.