Stitching anonymous to known without vanity metrics
Login often arrives late. In Thailand it may arrive on a different device than the browse. Stitching anonymous sessions to a known identity can reveal a real path. It can also manufacture a conversion story that never belonged to one person.
Cross-surface Journey Stitching only starts after the dictionary is clean. Then we add a second gate: a written identity rule. Either you have a durable identifier, or you explicitly mark the session unknown. “Probably the same shopper because the cart looks similar” is not a rule. It is flattery.
Shared devices
Family phones and shop tablets mean two people can look like one heroic journey: browse groceries, pause, later pay with a different wallet. If you stitch on device id alone, your map will claim a person completed checkout who only window-shopped. We teach a conservative default: device id may group candidates; it may not close identity.
What belongs on the atlas
Show anonymous and known as separate lanes until the rule fires. Draw a join with a date and a reason. Do not fold the join into a single conversion percentage for the board. Path Cartography Studio’s week on SEA stitching exists so that join stays visible. Vanity metrics love a merged line. Honest User Journey Mapping for Apps keeps the seam.