When do I use different JavaScript tracking methods?

ConversionRuler offers three ways of tracking actions using JavaScript on your web site, they are:

cr_track - For tracking landings and actions on page loads
cr_link - For tracking when visitors click on links
cr_submit - For tracking form submissions

This article should disambiguate when to use which tracking upon installation of ConversionRuler.

Why different forms of tracking?

cr_link and cr_submit were added solve some specific issues with FireFox and Safari browsers when downloading binary files (like installers, PDFs and other binary content).

The issue was, unfortunately, that tracking wouldn't work due to issues with those browsers.

What's the problem?

When the current page opens a new URL to a binary file, tracking doesn't work all of the time.

So, when you link from:

http://www.example.com/download-form.html

to

http://www.example.com/files/Brochure.pdf

The tracking doesn't gets invoked, because of a bug. So, we added two new calls to fix these issues, one for forms, and one for links.

It only happens when the current page URL changes (e.g your address bar changes to a different URL). If the link or form opens up a second window or targets an iframe, then the bug does not occur.

When to use cr_link

cr_link was added in order to solve a particular bug in browsers when downloading binary files, like installers, PDFs or executables.

When a user clicks on a link which is cr_link-enabled, it:

Tracks the action with ConversionRuler ...
Waits 300 microsectods
Follows the link

This solves the bug in all browsers. (The bug is present in FireFox and Safari.)

In prior versions of the tracking, you could use cr_track:

<a href="/page.html" onclick="return cr_track(2)">Track link with action 2</a>

or

<a href="/page.html" onclick="return cr_link(this, 2)">Track link with action 2</a>

Both tracking forms are still acceptable, but it is generally recommended to use cr_link as it handles all cases accurately for all kinds of links.

When to use cr_submit

cr_submit was added in order to solve a bug in browsers when submitting a form which results in a binary file download (such as installers, PDFs or executables.)

It works similarly to how cr_link works, by first tracking the action, waiting a short delay, then submitting the form manually. cr_submit always returns false, because it submits the form after tracking is done.

You should use cr_submit all of the time when tracking forms, because it will track forms submitted by:

The user clicking the submit button
The user clicking an image button
The user hitting "Enter" on their keyboard
The user clicking Go on their cell phone browser interface

If you simply instrument tracking by adding "cr_link" to the buttons in a form, you will not get the keyboard submissions.

When to use cr_track

cr_track should be invoked when:

Tracking landing pages, or
Loading the page itself should record an action, or
For JavaScript AJAX calls on the page
For any other situation which is not a form and not a link

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