Overview
Wingify Journey Analytics captures visitor interactions on your website without any manual event setup. It automatically identifies high-intent actions, such as clicks, page views, form submissions, and makes this data available in your Journey Analytics reports. Wingify also captures custom events automatically once you register them in Data360.
This article covers what Wingify captures by default, what it leaves out, and how to customize the data capture settings.
Prerequisites
- The Wingify SmartCode installed on the pages you want to track.
- An active Wingify Journey Analytics subscription or free trial.
- Data tracking enabled for your domain. You must explicitly click Enable data tracking on the setup screen. For more information, see Get Started with Journey Analytics.
Understand How Automatic Data Capture in Journey Analytics Works
Wingify Journey Analytics captures data continuously in the background wherever the Wingify SmartCode is active, and your Journey Analytics subscription or trial is live. For this data to be collected, no campaign needs to be running. Standard interactions such as clicks, page views, form submissions, and sessions require no manual event creation. However, you must register custom events in Data360, before Wingify captures them.
Data capture varies depending on the type of interaction. Clicks are evaluated against a set of rules to identify high-intent elements. On the other hand, page views, form submissions, new sessions, and custom events are captured in full by default.
This article further explains the data capture logic in detail.
Default Journey Analytics Capture Elements and Behavior
This section details what Journey Analytics tracks automatically, how custom-configured data is handled, and how to adjust capture settings for:
- Clicks
- Page views, form submissions, and sessions
- Custom events
- Visitor attributes
It also outlines how to override that behavior where needed.
Clicks
Wingify captures a click automatically when the element matches any of the following:
| Category | Description |
| Standard interactive elements |
Elements whose HTML tag is inherently interactive, so Wingify captures clicks on them without needing any additional markup. This includes:
|
| Elements marked as interactive |
Elements that are explicitly labeled as interactive for accessibility purposes, even if their underlying tag isn't one of the standard ones above. This includes elements with Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) roles (a standard used to help screen readers and other assistive tools understand an element's function), such as:
|
| Elements with click behavior |
Elements that behave like interactive controls because of code or styling, even though their tag and role don't indicate it. This includes:
|
| Elements that change the page |
Elements that don't meet any of the criteria above, but are still captured because clicking them visibly changes what the visitor sees. This includes:
These are tracked only if the click (interaction) causes a page navigation, URL change, or a significant update to the page. For example, a modal or drawer opening, content being replaced or expanded, or a new section rendering in place. |
-
Through the Wingify app, with no code changes required:
To capture an element that isn't tracked by default, use the element tagging capability to tag it. With this feature, clicks on tagged elements are then automatically stored. For more information, see Set Up Element Tagging in Wingify. -
Directly in your site's code, for teams that prefer development-level control:
To capture an element that isn't tracked by default, add the attribute data-wingify-capture="true" to it.
Page Views, Form Submissions, and Sessions
| Category | Description |
| Page views | 100% of page views are captured with standard properties, such as page URL, title, referrer, and timestamp. |
| Form submissions | All form submissions are captured. |
| Sessions |
Every new session start is captured.
Note: A Wingify session is typically defined as the visitor's duration on a website with the Wingify SmartCode installed before closing the browser. A session in Wingify ends after 30 minutes of inactivity.
|
Custom Events
Every custom event you create in Wingify is captured, whether or not it's attached to an active campaign.
Visitor Attributes
Exclusions from Default Journey Analytics Capture
Not every interaction on your site is captured automatically in Journey Analytics. A few are deliberately left out to keep your data clean and cost-effective. The following are excluded by default:
- Clicks on non-interactive text, such as paragraphs, body text, and blank space, are not captured, so there is no interaction data to tag for these elements.
- Micro-interactions such as hover, mouse movement, blur, and focus are not captured unless the specific interaction has been explicitly configured as a Data360 metric.
This keeps the data volume focused on high-signal interactions.
Automatic Data Capture for Data360 Metrics and Funnels
This article first describes automatic data capture at the raw event level, including clicks, page views, sessions, and similar interactions. Data360 metrics and funnels are built on the same underlying data. This section explains how that layer is populated automatically, with no manual setup required, and what that means for the data you get back.
Always-on capture, independent of campaigns
As long as your Journey Analytics subscription or trial is active, Wingify automatically captures the underlying data for every Data360 metric in your account (whether or not it's attached to a campaign). This means a metric can be created and can start collecting data immediately, with no extra setup. You can then use that metric directly in a metric report in Journey Analytics. For more information, see Use Metric Reports in Journey Analytics.
Funnels behave the same way: the same capture logic and data availability described in this section apply to funnels as well. For details on building a funnel report in Journey Analytics, see Use Funnel Reports in Journey Analytics.
Historical data availability for a metric depends on the type of event it is built on:
| Metric Type | Historical Data | Future Data |
| Custom events | Supported | Supported |
| Page view, page unload, or form submits | Supported | Supported |
| Click-based metrics | Depends on the selector | Supported |
| Metrics based on excluded events, for example, hover, scroll, and engagement. | Not Supported | Supported |
Click-based metrics are an exception because they rely on a CSS selector to identify the element being tracked. If that specific selector wasn't already being captured before the metric was created, historical data for it in Journey Analytics may not be available. This doesn't affect data going forward. Once Journey Analytics is active, all matching clicks are captured automatically from that point on.
Automatic Data Capture from Wingify Insights
If your account has an active Insights subscription with Heatmaps or Session Recording enabled, Wingify also captures errors and behavioral signals, such as rage clicks and dead clicks, for a sampled set of visitors. This data is available to plot directly in your Journey Analytics reports.
Effects of Automatic Data Capture Configuration Changes
Once you've configured capture overrides or created a Data360 metric, here's how the changes actually show up in Journey Analytics:
- Anonymizing an element only affects how that click appears in your reports, not whether it's tracked. The click event itself is still counted and appears in reports, but the element's text label is replaced. So no sensitive or identifying content is shown.
- A new Data360 metric starts working in Journey Analytics reports as soon as its underlying event data is captured, and doesn't need to be attached to a campaign first. However, since metrics aren't applied retroactively, this only covers data captured from the moment the metric is created, not events that occurred before it existed.
Troubleshooting
| Issue | Possible Cause | Recommended Solution |
| Clicks on a custom element aren't showing in Journey Analytics. | The element doesn't use a standard tag, ARIA role, or pointer cursor, and its click doesn't change the page. | Tag the element, or ask your development team to add data-wingify-capture="true". For more information, see Default Click Data Capture Behavior. |
| Historical data is missing for a new click-based metric. | The metric's CSS selector was not being captured before the metric was created. | Historical data for that selector can't be recovered. The metric captures data going forward. |
| A metric shows no conversions in an existing campaign report. | The metric wasn't tagged to that campaign when the events occurred. | Use an Analytics report, such as a Variation Shown to Metric Conversion funnel, to view this data outside the campaign report. |
Need more help?
For more information or further assistance, contact Wingify Support.