Adding the Navu panel to your website allows you to easily see in real-time what every visitor to your site is doing and to focus on visitors of particular interest to you.
This is where you can learn more about how the Navu Panel works and how best to use it.
Table of Contents
At a Glance
After Navu has been added to your website, anyone with permission can access the Navu Panel right on the website itself.
To see the Navu Panel, add the #navu suffix to any page on your site (i.e., https://mycompanywebsite.com#navu). After you sign in, the panel floats on the right side of any page you visit on your site.
If you close the panel, it becomes an icon that floats in the top-right and shows you a badge when there is new activity that may interest you.
When the Navu Panel is open, it will update itself in real-time as new visitors arrive or when existing visitors take actions.
The main panel lists visitors in reverse chronological order. Tap on any visitor to see the full journey details (perhaps over days, weeks, or months).
At the top of the visitor list, you can choose the subset of visitors of interest to you. Using a filter and/or search, you can zero in on exactly the visitors you want.
Every visitor to your website — even bots — are tracked and accessible through the Navu Panel. But your selections and filters keep you focused on those who are most important to you.
Getting Started
Anyone can add the Navu Panel to their website. Go to Navu’s website, enter your domain and email address, you’ll then get an embed code instantly. These instructions will explain how to install the embed code on each of your website domains and how to update your Consent Management Platform (CMP) to ensure that you get consent from your website visitors to track their journeys using Navu. All this can be done in a few minutes.
WARNING: It is your responsibility to fulfill your privacy obligations to your website visitors. Navu does not track visitors between sites, and we never share visitor information with anyone but you.
Once you have installed the Navu embed code, you’re ready to open the Navu Panel on your site and start using it.
To open the Navu Panel on your website the first time, just add #navu to any URL on your site, for example, https://mycompanywebsite.com#navu. That suffix tells Navu that you want to access the Navu Panel, and it will open to the sign-in page.
Enter your email address to sign in. This is limited to you (as the person who added Navu to the site) and to those you invite.
When you click Sign In, you’ll be sent a confirmation code to your email inbox. Back on your website, paste it into the code field in the Navu Panel. That’s it. The Navu Panel has no passwords to remember.
If you get signed out or want to access the Navu Panel from a different device, just follow the same process there. You will remain signed in on that browser wherever you are within your website.
It’s easy to remember! To access the Navu Panel, simply add #navu to your website URL.
Recent Visitors
When you first open the Navu Panel, you will see “Sitewide: Recent” in the top-left. This means you’re looking at a list of recent visitors.
In the top-right corner, you’ll see that this is “Live” — meaning that this list will update in real time as things change. Just sit and watch, and you’ll see new visitors arriving and some existing visitor journeys updating. Whenever there is a change, Navu pulses the background color to bring it to your attention.
You’ll probably see a visitor with the tag, “You”, on one of the records. This is you on your own browser! If you navigate around the site, you’ll see that record changing and moving to the top of the list.
There is a bit of information at this level about each visitor.
The timestamp tells you the last time we saw that visitor take any action on your site — opening a page, scrolling, clicking a link, etc.
You’ll see the visitor’s location (based on the geolocation of their IP address).
You’ll also see the status of each visitor — New Visitor, Prospect, Wanderer, Contact, Follower, Bot, etc. We use these words to give you an indication of how important this visitor may be to you. More on that later.
On the right side, you’ll see a small page icon with a number beside it. This tells you how many distinct pages on your website this visitor has visited during their journey. (A single journey may span several different visits.)
Finally, at the bottom of each visitor card, you may see one or more colored feature bubbles. These tell you about other things we know about this visitor. For example, if you see “Link Click”, you’ll know that this visitor went to another page on your website by clicking on one of the hyperlinks on one of your pages. If you see “Search”, it means that that visitor used your site search feature. And so on.
Journeys
At the top level, you can see a bit about each visitor. But you probably want to know more. When you tap on a visitor there, the Navu Panel will open the Journey for that particular visitor.
In the example you see here, several fields have been blurred, but you’ll see an example of a real journey. At the top, you’ll see what we have learned about this particular visitor — location, device type, engagement metrics, how they came to the website, features, etc.
Below this, you’ll see a timeline of the complete journey. Each dot represents one pageview. The black dots represent the first pageview in a new visit. You can see where they arrived from, what page they visited, and what they did while on that page. The small clock icon tells you how much active time the visitor spent reading that page. (This is not just the total time sitting on the page. This is a measure of actual activity by that visitor while on that page.)
At the top of the panel, you’ll notice that it still says, “Live”. That means that if this particular visitor is still live on the site, you’ll be seeing updates to this journey in real time as they happen.
To return to the list of visitors, tap on the arrow in the top-left corner of the panel.
Visitor Selections
Back on the Visitors page, you’ll recall that it originally said, “Sitewide: Recent”, at the top of the panel. That means that you are seeing the most recent visitors across the site based on the last time they took any action on your site. (In the Filtering section below, you’ll learn how you can select different subsets of these visitors.)
Perhaps you have a different goal in mind for the Navu Panel. Tap on the selection (“Sitewide: Recent”), and you’ll see a dropdown list of different visitor selections to choose from. These are designed to answer different questions you may have about your website visitors. These are organized into two groups — sitewide or “this page”.
The sitewide groups will be the same in the Navu panel regardless of where you are on your own website. The “This Page” selections will depend on the page you are currently visiting. So if you navigate to a different page on your site, you’ll see different visitors listed there.
Sitewide – Recent
This is the default. Visitors are listed based on the last time they took any action on your site.
Sitewide – Conversions
Navu considers a “conversion” to have occured when a visitor fills in a form on your website and provides their email address. In this case, we’ll show you that email address in their visitor card. This selection automatically filters to only those visitors who have converted. The list is sorted based on the point in time when that conversion occurred. And that is the timestamp you see for each visitor even though they may have visited more pages after converting.
Sitewide – Ad Clicks
If you use advertising to bring visitors to your website, this lists only those visitors who arrived via an ad click. The timestamp shown is the last time they clicked on an ad to visit your site.
Sitewide – Ad Conversions
This lists all visitors who arrived via an ad click and subsequently converted.
Sitewide – Landings
This is similar to Recent, except that visitors are listed based on the last time they arrived for a new visit to your site and that is the timestamp you see in the visitor card.
This Page – Recent
This lists the most recent visitors to the same page as you are currently visiting yourself. These visitors are listed in order of when they last visited this page and that is the timestamp that is shown for each. You’ll note the “This Page” designation for each pageview in the Journey identifying visits to the page you are currently visiting.
This Page – Conversions
This lists conversions (form fills with an email address) that occurred on the page that you are currently visiting.
This Page – Ad clicks
This lists visitors who arrived on your current page via an ad click. The timestamp is when that last happened.
This Page – Landings
This lists visitors who started a visit on the same page that you are currently visiting. The timestamp is when they started that visit.
Filtering
By default, the visitor list includes only a certain subset of all visitors to your site. On the visitors page, tap on the Filter button,
You’ll see a dialog where you can adjust the filter according to your needs.
There are many different kinds of filters here. Each of these filters has a default setting — mostly taking no action at all — except for Status which, by default, includes only the more “interesting” visitors based on their engagement level.
Any filter that has a non-default setting will have a purple dot beside it. In the example here, you’ll see that the Status filter has a purple dot meaning that it has been reconfigured from its default settings.
You can combine any number of filters you want. These are combined using an AND arrangement — meaning that for a visitor to show up in the list, they must meet all of the criteria defined by all of the filters.
At the bottom of the dialog, you’ll see a “Reset to Default Filter” button. This is a quick way to get the filter back to its normal state.
Note that in a few of the different top-level selections described earlier, some of these filters are ignored or overridden. But most filters will still be applied. For example, if you choose “Conversions”, then the Status filter will be ignored, but other filters will still be applied.
When you click on one of the filters, a new dialog will appear allowing you to configure that particular filter.
For example, if you choose the Geography filter, you’ll see a list of the countries from which visitors have been found. These are listed in order of the percentage of recent visitors from that country or region.
By default, all countries are included. But you can select a particular country and click Apply to apply that filter.
At the bottom of some of the filters, you may find a button to narrow the list even further in your choose. For example, at the bottom of the Geography filter, after selecting a particular country, you can click on “Select a region” to choose a state/region within that country.
Each of the filters shows you an appropriate list of options and usually gives you some sense of the ratios of the visitors involved.
This contains a wealth of information as well. For example, in the Content filter, you can see the most visited pages on your website listed in order of popularity.
Search Visitors
We’ve explained how to use selections and filtering to focus your attention on certain subsets of visitors. It is also possible to use search to narrow your attention to specific visitors.
For example, suppose you’d like to see visitors from the USDA who have signed up on your website. Just type in the email domain — or even a specific email address into the search box as you see in the example here.
Likewise, you can search for a location or certain other information about the visitor.
Minimizing Navu
The Navu Panel can be great for keeping an eye on what is happening on your site. But especially on smaller screens, it may get in your way.
If you click the X in the top-right corner of the panel, this will minimize the panel down to a Navu icon floating in the top-right corner of your browser window.
To help you know when there has been any update to the panel, we will add a badge — a purple dot — to the icon. Tap on the button to open the panel again to see what has changed.
Members and Invitations
When you added Navu to your site, you provided your email address. And once we saw the Navu embed code go live on your site, we knew that you had to be responsible for that, so we can trust you with access to all of this sensitive information. But what about others?
As you can see from the installation instructions, anyone could add #navu to a URL and see the Navu Panel. However, in order to get access to anything useful, you must sign in. But we don’t let anyone sign in. Only the owner of the site (i.e., the person who added Navu in the first place) can invite others to access the panel. This is done by first clicking Members from the menu in the top-left corner of the panel.
In that panel, you’ll see yourself listed along with other members, if any. Next, at the bottom, click on “Invite a Member” to add someone else. Provide the email address and the role you would like them to have. That person will then receive an email invitation from Navu.
The Members panel also lets you remove members and/or change their roles. Only owners can invite other members and change roles.
Troubleshooting
If the Navu Panel is not being displayed on your site, here are a few suggestions to resolve the problem.
Verify the URL. Some sites may have code that manipulates URLs after they are entered into the browser address bar. Confirm that the URL is for your site’s domain and ends in either /#navu or just #navu.
Confirm that the Navu embed code is indeed running on the page you are viewing. To do so, left click anywhere on the page and select view source from the menu. In the tab that opens, search (Ctrl-F) for navu:site. You should see the Navu embed code you previously added to your site.
If the Navu embed code is not in the page source, there are two possible problems. You are viewing a cached version of the page. To resolve this, clear the caches associated with your website. If that does not resolve the problem, revisit how the Navu embed code was added to your site’s CMS (Content Management System). For further assistance, contact support at [email protected].
Uninstalling Navu
If you ever decide that you no longer want to have Navu on your site, all you have to do is to remove the embed code from your site and Navu’s entry in your CMP. Simple as that.
