A visit to an online store is a visit. It has a location, a date, criteria and evidence, just like an on-site one.
A digital visit is the structured record of an online store analysis, made while browsing the site. You pick the location, select brands from the catalogue and mark the products found and the state of each. The visit is stored in Visit Dock next to the on-site ones, flagged as digital, and feeds the same reports, charts and health score.
The online channel usually ends up in its own file, with its own criteria and no link to anything else. The result is that nobody ever compares the two channels, which is exactly where the value is. Keeping digital visits in the same history is not tidiness: it is what lets you answer "the campaign is built in store, but is it online?".
Navigate to the product or category page you want to analyse.
VisitWebDock opens a side panel over the page itself, without forcing you to leave it.
Search by name. If the online store does not exist in the workspace yet, you create it there.
The workspace catalogue brands being analysed on this page.
For each brand, record the products found and the state of each one.
The visit appears in Visit Dock immediately, available for reports and analysis.
Checks whether what was negotiated with the retailer is reflected on their site too.
Complements the physical route with audits of the same retailers' online channel.
Tracks brand presentation at partners without relying on third-party reports.
Extend the service to the digital channel with the same team and the same tool.
On Monday you visit the physical store and on Tuesday the same retailer's online store. The two visits attach to distinct but comparable locations, and the gap between them is frequently the most useful finding of the week.
A pure-play online retailer cannot be visited, but it can be audited. It gains a history, a health score and incidents like any other point of sale.
Half an hour before talking to the client, a five-minute digital visit gives the current state of the brand on their site, with a date and a record.
| Ad-hoc check | Recorded digital visit |
|---|---|
| Lives in a screenshot or in memory | Lives in the location history |
| Different criteria every time | The same criteria from the catalogue |
| Counts towards no metric | Counts towards reports and health score |
| Impossible to compare with the physical channel | Comparable side by side |
| Absent from the API and reports | Returned by /visits like any visit |
| Tool | VisitWebDock extension for Google Chrome |
|---|---|
| Channel | Recorded as Digital, distinguishable in filters and reports |
| Brands per visit | Several, which is what enables co-occurrence analysis |
| Creating locations | Possible from the extension itself |
| Authentication | 90-day token, issued after explicit authorisation |
| Cost | Included in Visit Dock at no extra cost |
| API availability | Yes, in GET /visits |
It does. To Visit Dock it is an ordinary visit, only with the channel flagged as digital. It counts in totals, reports, the health score and the API.
No. An online store is a public shop window, just as a shelf in a store open to the public is.
Yes. The extension does not depend on site structure: the user is the one who picks the location, the brands and the products.
You can, and you should. Analysing several brands in one session creates a single visit containing all of them, which later lets you study which brands share space with yours.
Through the channel filter in the visits list, and the With digital visits filter in the Locations list, which shows only the locations already audited this way.
It depends how you want to analyse it. The common approach is separate locations, because they are separate points of sale, using the client code to tie them to the same client.
The brand's shop window is no longer only in the store. It is on the category page of an online supermarket, and almost nobody audits it with the same rigour.
Does the product appear in the category? With which image? Is the description complete? Simple questions almost nobody answers regularly.
Knowing your brand is present in 80% of stores is useful. Knowing which brands it shares that space with is what changes the conversation.
How to install and use the extension that records digital visits.
We run a live audit on an online store of your choosing, from start to report.