What is user identification (identify) in analytics?

How does identify work?

visitrack.identify("usr_8f2a1", { plan: "pro", signed_up: "2026-09-14" })

Before sign-up, a visitor is an anonymous id. When they sign up or log in, your code calls identify with your stable user id. From then on, that visitor — and their earlier anonymous history in the same browser — belongs to that user. If they later identify on another device, both devices' activity can be tied to one person.

Identify example

Ana first visits from a Google search on her laptop, signs up, and later uses your app on her phone. Without identify she's two anonymous visitors and the phone sessions look like unattributed new traffic. With identify on both devices, she's one person whose first touch is Google, and her later payment is credited there.

Why user identification matters

• Cross-device journeys and more accurate attribution.
• Filtering analytics by your own data: plan, company size, sign-up cohort.
• Connecting product usage to the marketing that acquired each user.

Privacy duties and pitfalls

• Traits like email and name are personal data — disclose it, minimize it, and be able to delete it per person.
• Use a stable internal id, not an email address, as the user id.
• Call identify only after a confirmed sign-up or login, never with guessed values.
• Identified tracking across sessions in the EU usually needs a lawful basis beyond anonymous analytics.

Identify in VisitTrack

Call window.visitrack.identify(userId, traits) in the browser or send identify from your server. Identified people appear in the People tab with their traits, visits and payments; you can filter, count and export them, query them through the API and MCP, and delete a person and their data. In cookieless mode, identify can also carry the first touch your app stored at sign-up, keeping attribution across days without cookies. See people and identify.