TL;DR

The anonymous person on your website who can open the chat bubble and start talking to you — Eloqra captures their context the moment they send a first message.

Key Points

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A visitor is anyone on a page running the Eloqra [[embed-code]], whether or not they ever open the chat — most never identify themselves until they type a message. [2]

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On the first [[chat-message]], Eloqra captures visitor context: page URL, hostname, user agent, and device type/browser/OS, plus IP-based geolocation (country, region, city). [1][3]

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Visitors are anonymous by default; an optional [[pre-chat-form]] can collect a name and email, turning a raw visitor into an identified [[contact]].

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Eloqra also records UTM params on the visitor record, so you can see which campaign or channel a conversation came from — see [[utm-parameters]] and [[visitor-tracking]].

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A returning person can produce several [[conversation|conversations]] over time, the same way analytics tools separate sessions from unique visitors. [4]

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Because IP addresses and location data are personal data under [[gdpr-compliance|GDPR]], visitor context should be handled and retained responsibly. [3]

What Eloqra Knows About a Visitor

When someone lands on a page with the Eloqra script, they exist as an anonymous visitor — no name, no email, just a presence behind the Chat Launcher. The moment they send their first Chat Message, Eloqra attaches context to the visitor record: the page URL and hostname they messaged from, their user agent, a parsed device profile (type, browser, OS), and an IP-based geolocation giving country, region, and city. ^[1] This mirrors how mainstream live-chat tools surface the visitor's current URL and location so an operator can help without a barrage of questions. UTM parameters are stored too, so a founder can tell whether a chat came from a launch tweet or a paid ad without asking. ^[2]

From Anonymous Visitor to Identified Contact

Most website visitors never reveal who they are — industry estimates put it as high as 97-98% who browse without identifying themselves. ^[2] Eloqra keeps them as anonymous visitors until two things can change that. First, an optional Pre-Chat Form (the collectVisitorInfo setting) asks for a name and email before the chat opens, promoting the visitor to an identifiable Contact. Second, the natural flow of a Conversation often surfaces details an operator can act on. Either way, the visitor is the unit Eloqra tracks; like the difference between sessions and unique visitors in web analytics, one person can return and start fresh conversations over time without becoming a new visitor in your mind. ^[4]

Privacy and the Visitor Record

The context Eloqra collects is convenient, but it is not consequence-free. Under GDPR, an IP address is explicitly an online identifier and counts as personal data, and so does location data derived from it. ^[3] That means a visitor's geolocation, device fingerprint, and any name or email captured through the Pre-Chat Form fall inside the scope of data-protection rules. For SaaS founders and indie hackers running Eloqra, the practical takeaways are simple: be transparent about what the widget captures, avoid retaining visitor records longer than you need them, and treat the Chat Transcript and visitor context as personal data when you decide how to store and export it.

Sources & References

What is a Website Visitor Tracking Feature? — LiveAgent ↗

Anonymous Visitor Tracking: Complete Guide — VWO ↗

What is personal data under the GDPR? — GDPR.eu ↗

How to Find Unique Visitors in Google Analytics — Contentsquare ↗

Last updated: June 25, 2026

Related Terms

Contact

A contact is the stored record of an individual person a business has interacted with - typically holding identity details like name and email plus the history of conversations and activity tied to them. In live chat and support tools, a contact is created or enriched the moment a visitor starts talking, turning an anonymous browser into a known, addressable person.

Pre-Chat Form

A pre-chat form is a short form shown before a live chat starts that asks the visitor for a small amount of identifying information, typically their name and email. In Eloqra it is the optional collectVisitorInfo step that gates the chat input until the visitor submits their details.

Conversation

A conversation is the threaded exchange of messages between a single website visitor and a project's operators, grouped as one unit with a status and unread counters. In Eloqra it is the container that holds every message, the visitor's captured context, and the assigned operator.

Visitor Tracking

Visitor tracking is the practice of collecting context about the people browsing a website, such as the pages they view, their device and browser, where they came from, and an approximate location. In Eloqra this context is captured on a visitor's first chat message and shown to the operator answering in Telegram.

IP Geolocation

IP geolocation is the practice of estimating a device's approximate physical location (country, region, city) by looking up its public IP address in a database that maps IP ranges to places. In Eloqra it runs server-side on the first visitor message to attach location context to a conversation.

UTM Parameters

UTM parameters are tags appended to a URL's query string (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_term, utm_content) that record which marketing campaign, channel, and source sent a visitor to your site. The acronym comes from Urchin Tracking Module, the analytics software Google acquired in 2005.

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