Recording Ratio
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What is the Recording Ratio?
Each plan has a monthly recording quota. Quotas are distributed daily and recordings are made on a balanced schedule throughout the day based on the percentage of visitors you choose to record (more on this below). Your fixed quota applies to the entire account, regardless of how many projects have been created. For example, if you have a monthly quota of 10,000 recordings and chooses to record 20% of visitors, over a 30 day period the breakdown will be 333 recordings available per day (10,000/30). In this example 1 out of every 5 visitors to the site are recorded. You can view your quota by clicking on the “View Quota” link in the left sidebar on the Projects Page.
Also see: Recording quota
How to distribute your quota between several projects
The quota is per your entire account and is shared for all the projects that you have.
If you want a particular project to record more than another (or if you want to distribute the quota differently) you will need to set appropriate recording ratios by generating matching tracking codes for your projects.
Assuming you have 3 projects and you want to allocate the recordings between them with a 50%, 25%, 25% spread, and that the recording ratio suggested by the calculator for the three projects is 80%, 40%, 100% respectively. You should then generate a code to record 40%, 10%, 25% of your visitors respectively. The new ratios are calculated by multiplying the suggested ratio by the fraction of the quota you want to assign to each specific project.
Calculating the recording ratio for a multiple projects in an account In this scenario – multiple projects in the account – there are two possibilities: All projects have the same importance (weight) in the account Some of the projects have more weight than others in the same account When all projects have the same weight, the recording ratio is the same for all projects. It is the ratio described in 2.2 above. All projects should have the same ratio set in the code. When some of the projects have more weight than others, the calculation is as follows: Get the following numbers: The customer's overall recording quota. The amount of traffic for each project (preferably in pageviews) Percentage of the customer's quota they want to invest in each project. Once you have these numbers the formula for each project is:
∀Q≤T:R=Q/T∙P
Where:
∀Q≤T: – “Whenever the overall quota is smaller than or equal to the amount of traffic for the specific project, do the following…”
R – Recording ratio [number]
Q – Recording quota [pageviews⁄time]
T – Amount of traffic for the specific project [pageviews⁄time]
P – Percentage of quota to be spent on the project [number]
Make sure that Q and T have the same dimensions (Month, week or day)
Example - Calculating the recording ratio for a multiple projects in an account, with different weights
Given - 3 projects in the account:
The customer's overall recording quota – 350,000 (Pageviews/month)
The amount of traffic for each project (Pageviews/month)
Project 1 Project 2 Project 3
280,000 190,000 460,000
Percentage of the customer's quota they want to invest in each project.
Project 1 Project 2 Project 3
33% 45% 22%
R=Q/T∙P
R(project1) = 350,000 / 280,000 * 0.33 = 0.413
R(project2) = 350,000 / 190,000 * 0.45 = 0.829
R(project3) = 350,000 / 460,000 * 0.22 = 0.167
How to change the Recording Ratio of an existing project
The recording ratio is part of the tracking code. Either generate a new tracking code with the ratio you want, or change the ratio directly in the code. The ratio is the second parameter to the “ClickTale” function and the valid range for this parameter is 0 to 1, where 1 denotes 100%. If your ratio is 20% and you want to change it to 50%, change:
ClickTale([your pid],0.2,[your partition]);
to:
ClickTale([your pid],0.5,[your partition]);
Why it's important to set the optimal Recording Ratio
Setting a recording ratio which is too low might result in poor usage of your recording quota, however setting the ratio too high is also not advised: ClickTale attempts to record entire visitors’ visits (by identifying the visitor via a first-party cookie). Visitors who reached your website before the quota runs out, and then continue their visit past the point when the quota runs out, will stop generating recordings. Therefore if your quota reaches its limit several hours before it is due to refill it increases the chances of visits being partially recorded.
By using the optimal recording ratio (based on your site traffic and quota) you can prevent your quota from running out prematurely while using all or almost all of it. We suggest you use the ratio determined for your site traffic, and monitor your quota usage - alter it if you see your quota reaching its limit prematurely or never reaching its limit.
Changing the Recording Ratio depending on URL
You can use the code found here to modify the recording ratio based on the page URL.
