This event is triggered whenever a site visitor clicks a link in a site page or an e-mail message.
Examples: Clicks link to page /promo.jsp
Clicks link from page /index.jsp [to page /promo.jsp]
Clicks link with sources BikePromo [from page /index.jsp] [to page /promo.jsp]
The ClickThrough
event is similar to the PageVisit
event, except that it is specifically designed to help you track and report on the links that visitors follow. The message that corresponds to this event contains detailed data about the link that the visitor clicked; for example, it contains information about both the page where the link is located and the page to which it leads. For more information, see the description later in this section of the properties that the message contains.
The ClickThrough
event works only for links that include an anchor tag containing a dsource
parameter. The following shows an example of the JSP code for this type of link:
<dsp:a href="content/welcome.jsp">
<dsp:param value="OnSale, MemberDiscount" name="dsource"/>
Click here to see this month's discounts!
</dsp:a>
The values that the page developer specifies for the dsource
parameter (in the example, OnSale
and MemberDiscount
) can be any string. The Scenarios module uses them to identify and distinguish the links for purposes such as reporting. For example, the page developer might give several links the same dsource
value to identify that they belong to a similar group, such as links that point to a specific set of content pages.
Note that at least one dsource
value must be specified in the link for the event to be triggered.
The event is triggered only once for any clicked link, regardless of how many dsource
values there are. For example, if the dsource
value is "OnSale, MemberDiscount"
, only one ClickThrough
message is sent.
In addition to the dsource
parameter, you can optionally include a dreferrer
parameter as shown in the following JSP example:
<dsp:a href="destination/page.jsp"> <dsp:param value="source/page.jsp" name="dreferrer"/> <dsp:param value="OnSale, MemberDiscount" name="dsource"/> Click here to see this month's discounts! </dsp:a>
The dreferrer
parameter defines the sourcePath
of a ClickThrough
event (see below for more information about the sourcePath
property). In normal circumstances, the sourcePath
is determined by getting the value of the “Referrer” HTTP header. If this header is unavailable, the system can use the value of the dreferrer
parameter instead.
You can also trigger the ClickThrough
event from links that you embed in targeted e-mail messages. Use the same JSP or JHTML code (in other words, dsource
parameters in anchor tags) that you would use for links in site pages. Note that the dreferrer
feature is especially useful for links that you embed in targeted e-mail messages because no “Referrer” header is sent when a visitor clicks this type of link.
The following table shows additional information about the ClickThrough
event.
Class name |
|
JMS name |
|
Display name | Clicks a Link |
Message context | Request |
Message scope | Individual |
Message source | Component: Class: |
Component that calls the message source |
|
How this event is triggered | This event is triggered when a request containing a URL with a See the important note at the bottom of this section. |
How to turn this event off | Set to false the |
The message that triggers this event contains the following properties:
Property | Type | Scenario editor label |
---|---|---|
|
|
|
The pathname of the page that contained the clicked link. Note that the pathname does not include the protocol or domain of the URL. For example, if a visitor clicks a link on the page | ||
|
|
|
The pathname of the page that is represented by the clicked link. Again, the protocol and domain are not included. | ||
|
|
|
A user-defined, comma-separated list of keywords that signifies some sort of information association with the clicked link. At least one keyword is required in order for a | ||
|
| Does not appear. |
The profile ID of the visitor who clicked the link. | ||
|
| Does not appear. |
The ID of the current site. The value is provided by the Site Context Manager. This parameter applies to multisite environments. |
Important: As described above, this event is triggered when a URL containing a dsource
parameter is intercepted in the ATG servlet pipeline by the PageViewServletTrigger
. This behavior means that the event will be fired not only when a visitor clicks a given link but also when he or she reloads a page containing that link. If you use the ClickThrough
event for reporting purposes, and you want to track the number of times it occurs, note that the total count will include page reloads as well as clicks. Similarly, if you use this event to trigger scenario actions such as sending a targeted e-mail or populating a slot with content, and you design the scenario so that the action can occur more than once for the same site visitor, bear in mind that the action will also occur when a site visitor reloads a page containing a dsource
URL.