topic Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen in APIs & Integrations

Understanding of First and Last page seen

jpsanchez — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 09:09:45 GMT

Hi ;)),

I´m just working with an artifact in order to relate contacts and pageviews. My aprouch as read in the forum is to work with the first time and last time Properties historical data. ( 45 maximum records)

So at this point i have a question for hubspot Dev in order to understand better the properties.

If definition of first and last is = first page in a season, last page in a season.

that means theoretically we have the Entry and the exit door and we don´t have what is happening in betwwen, is it right?

Thanks for the explanation in advance.

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

kestrada — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 14:32:37 GMT

Hello @jpsanchez ,

I understand that you would like to find out if it is any more properties that will allow us to analyze the activity of the contacts within your web apart of the first and last page seen. What exactly are you looking to see as actions in between?

The other properties that we have available are listed in this article.

Other actions that we can have a look into as part of actions taken in your web are: links, CTas, etc. These elements can give us more information related to the actions that our contacts use to interact with our Web.

Please let me know if is anything else I can clarify further.

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

jpsanchez — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 15:32:49 GMT

Hi Kestrada, and thanks for the quick response 😉

The final goal is to relate webpage views with contacts. ( Urls not numerical data like count of visits, etc..) , with today´s limitations with hubspot ( as far as i understand you can´do that at this point)

So my walk arround is to use the historical property feature from this two hubspot properties. ( first and last page seen).

In the process of evaluating this walk arround i´m not sure how this two properties work and reading the information as per your link i´m still not sure how they work.

First Question.

Is the first page seen only recorded one time or it could be update ?

Second question.

Is last page seen update it with with the last page in a contact visit?

Please let me show you this quick draw and thanks a lot in advance

Flow visits

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

kestrada — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 17:24:34 GMT

Hello @jpsanchez ,

Wow! Thanks for that amazing explanation on that. That´s a great way to explain the structure of your Websites and business

As per documentation, I know we don´t specify on this but what happens is:

1. The first page seen is the URL that we record on the first seen URL where the visitant of your web was converted as a contact. This is a URL that we only record at the moment of conversion and we don't modify it later.

2. The last page seen is the URL that we collect related on the last visit that the contact did on your website also after the first conversion. This URL is due to change depending on the last page visited each time the contact revisits your page.

That being said, let´s use your current example that you attached to your response. Let´s get the ball rolling!

So if I am a new visitant on your web and I visit your information product(www.product.com/product) page and there I filled up a form, I submitted it and at that moment my contact will be created with the recorded property:

--> First page seen: www.product.com/product

After submitting the form, I go to the contact-us section(www.product.com/contact-us) of your page and then I left your web. The contact property recorded will be:

--> Last page seen: www.product.com/contact-us

We will say after a few hours, I come back to your home page(www.product.com/home-page) and I click on your link <<More information about your staff>>(www.product.com/staff). There I read about your staff stories and I leave the page again.

This time the property << Last page seen>> will update automatically within the contact record and it will look like:

--> Last page seen: www.product.com/staff

In conclusion, we only keep updating the last page seen property related to the last page seen each time. Whereas the First page seen it is the URL of the page where my visitant became a contact within my portal.

I hope this helps you to understand more about it. If not, please feel free to post your question above and I will be more than happy to take a further look.

Thanks

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

jpsanchez — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 07:03:39 GMT

Wow! That´s just pefect!

Thanks a lot for taking your time with the answer @kestrada , i really apreciate it .

fits with my asumptions, unfurtunatly i did not find the golden ticket. Anyway i will finish the artefact.

thanks again !

😉

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

mbinmasoud — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 15:42:41 GMT

Thank you, Kestrada! That's really helpful. I have a follow-up question:

Our company is using the "Last page seen" property as a way to record every pageview associated with a contact and storing it in our internal custom CRM system (not HubSpot). Since pageview events can't be synced and packaged the same way they're presented within HubSpot, we're taking this route as a stop-gap.

With that in mind, does the property "last page seen" update with every new pageview within the same session, or does HubSpot stagger the update until the end of a session, and capture the last page of the session?

To tie this back to your example: when visited the homepage (www.product.com/home-page) then clicked on <<More information about your staff>> (www.product.com/staff), did the Last Seen Page effective update to "www.product.com/home-page" momentarily then to "www.product.com/staff"? Or did it skip to www.product.com/staff?

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

scronin — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 21:58:10 GMT

@mbinmasoud all the page views in the session will be reflected as values on 'Last page seen', so long as a new page load is recorded. Single-page apps, however, don't trigger a reloading of the page despite the user navigating to different content. Thankfully, if this is the case, you can use a custom 'Track Page View' event (part of our Tracking Code API) and the setPath parameter to accomodate for this scenario and update the 'Last page seen' property despite the page not technically re-loading.

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

mbinmasoud — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 22:39:29 GMT

Thank you so much, @scronin !

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

kestrada — Sat, 21 Nov 2020 07:32:36 GMT

Hi @mbinmasoud

What a great question!

As @scronin says, once the new page loaded is recorded, it will show within the" last page seen" property.

Within the property history of the main property you could then see the values like in my example below:

I hope this helps.

Kira

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

splmsk — Mon, 22 Mar 2021 16:23:38 GMT

Oh, this thread is very helpful! I found answers to many questions. Thanks to everyone.
I have one more related question for @kestrada about the First Page Seen.

"The first page seen is the URL that we record on the first seen URL where the visitant of your web was converted as a contact.

--> First page seen: www.product.com/product "

So I want just to re-check. The first page seen is the page that was the first during the session when the conversion was made? So not always the very first interaction with your website?
What I mean, if I'm a user that visited the website (to read a few articles on a blog), and left without filling the form. So Hubspot got my cookies.
A bit later I come to the website again. This time on the product page and contact page where I fill the form. Is it correct that I became a contact during my second session (when I registered), and my First Page Seen will be recorded as a product page (not a blog page)?

Visit #1: www.product.com/blog/blog_1 -> www.product.com/blog/blog_2 -> left the website unregistered
Visit #2: www.product.com/product -> registered -> left the website as a registered user.
First page seen = www.product.com/product

I know that Hubspot updates the Original source of prospect if can match it with cookies of the prospect that was on the website before. But regarding the first page seen you wrote: "This is a URL that we only record at the moment of conversion and we don't modify it later.". Does it mean that it's impossible to track the first page where our user entered the website if it wasn't registered during the same session?

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

kestrada — Wed, 24 Mar 2021 13:49:45 GMT

Hi @splmsk ,

Thanks for the reply. I love seeing the interest in this specific topic and happy to clarify it further.

In the previous explanation, you are referring to, my first response was more focused on the explanation of the specific case @jpsanchez was proposing to discuss.

You are totally right!

The first page seen in this case it is the first page that the contact sees as so. This property is only recorded when we have full access through Hubspot Analytics: web analytics, visitor traffic information. All of them recollected by the cookie attached to the visitor, lead and recorded contact within Hubspot.

It could be the case that records the first interaction with your website, but only when we can identify the customer as so. If they are not identified previously it will only be possible to access their information through our prospects tool.https://knowledge.hubspot.com/prospects/use-prospects

"Prospects are visitors to your site that have not yet converted on a form. The prospects tool uses the HubSpot tracking code to detect the IP address for each page view. It then surfaces publicly available information about the company associated with the visitor's IP address so you can learn more about the visitors to your site."

If we don´t have them identify, that means they don´t have the cookie attached to them. Therefore

when we start being able to follow their activity is when:

1. Unless they have a cookie collected through a form submission, we couldn't:

1. 1 Create and identify the activity of the contact within your web

1.2 Follow the next actions within your web

Once we have the URL added as a property within the information of the first page seen, this won´t be possible to modify.

I hope this helps you clarifying futher.

Kira🤖

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

PedroMarzagao — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 08:51:22 GMT

Thanks @kestrada!

So I'm not sure if this changed in the meantime, but the documentation here says:

Visitors will be tracked anonymously even before they become contacts. If and when a visitor fills out a form, HubSpot will associate their previous page views based on the tracking cookie. If the email address filled in the form is associated with an existing contact, this visitor will be identified as the contact. This includes contacts that were imported.

In my understanding, this means that the web activity recorded anonymously before the user becomes a contact, in pages where the HS tracking code is installed, will be linked to that same user once he becomes a contact.

Am I reading this wrong? Or effectively a user's web history is still only recorded after the moment he becomes a contact?

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

VFernando — Wed, 28 Jun 2023 10:49:47 GMT

If someone first landed on the www.homepage.com and then move to www.homepage.com/product and on the products page and on that page the visitor filled a form and became a lead/customer and then he checked the www.homepage.con/contact and then he ended the session.

What is the first page seen and last page seen ?

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

MrBean — Fri, 29 Sep 2023 21:48:38 GMT

^^ @hubspot feel like we need some confirmation / clarity here.

Re: Understanding of First and Last page seen

JTaylor66 — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 21:16:36 GMT

I am unclear on this too. @kestrada Let's say on my first visit to a site my landing page is: www.product.com/product-a/

And I don't convert in that session.

1 week later I come back, landing on the page www.product.com/product-b/
and I fill in a form in this session

Will my first page seen property in hubspot be:

www.product.com/product-a/
or
www.product.com/product-b/

thanks!