Recognizing your site visitors isn’t always an easy task. Most ecommerce traffic is anonymous, with some studies suggesting that number reaches up to 90%. Many shoppers switch between devices before completing a purchase, leaving behind only scattered signals of intent. 

This disconnected behavior makes it difficult for brands to connect the dots and deliver consistent experiences. Without the ability to identify anonymous visitors and unify their activity, ecommerce personalization becomes disjointed. The result is missed opportunities, inefficient campaigns, and a poor customer experience.

Identity resolution helps solve this challenge. By linking anonymous visitor identification with behavioral signals, it creates more personalized customer experiences that feel relevant and timely.

What is Identity Resolution?

Identity resolution is the process of connecting a shopper’s data points across sessions and devices to create a single, unified identity. By pulling together scattered signals, such as browsing activity, cart behavior, and form entries, brands can deliver personalized customer experiences that feel consistent across every touchpoint.

While often confused with customer profiling, identity resolution plays a unique role in ecommerce personalization. Here’s how the two differ:

• Customer profiling: what’s inside the profile, such as demographics, behaviors, and preferences.
• Identity resolution: how those pieces are stitched together into one identity across devices and sessions.

For example, customer profiling tells you what a shopper buys. Identity resolution, on the other hand, ensures you know it’s the same shopper who browsed on mobile yesterday and made a purchase on desktop today.

Beyond profiling, identity resolution also differs from analytics. Analytics measures customer data after an interaction, while identity resolution enables real-time action. This helps brands identify anonymous visitors during their journey and deliver the right experience at the right time.

By resolving identities across sessions and devices, brands can connect the dots and tailor campaigns to behaviors, preferences, and interests, all without relying on third-party cookies.

Why Identity Resolution is Important for Ecommerce Personalization

The modern shopper expects brands to deliver personalized experiences across every visit. Even when visitors browse anonymously, switch devices, or abandon carts, identity resolution unifies every interaction to meet these expectations and deliver a consistent, seamless experience. 

Let’s break down why identity resolution matters:

• Rising anonymity: Anonymous shoppers often represent untapped revenue, but recognizing them early in their journey ensures they aren’t lost opportunities.
• Cross-device behavior: Shoppers move fluidly between devices, and without cross-device recognition, each visit looks like a “new visitor”.
• Cookieless future: With third-party cookies disappearing, relying on first-party data is a privacy-conscious way to track users. 
• Personalization: Shoppers value relevant experiences, and connecting behaviors across sessions makes it possible to deliver them at scale.
• Impact on conversions: Recognition drives relevance and powers data-driven personalization that improves offer timing and abandonment recovery efforts.

By unifying the shopper journey, identity resolution creates the foundation of an omnichannel customer experience. It ensures that every touchpoint feels connected and enables brands to build stronger customer loyalty over time.

Methods of Identity Resolution: How It Works

Identity resolution includes two main methods: deterministic matching and probabilistic matching. Both approaches play a key role in anonymous visitor identification, but they rely on different signals to recognize shoppers.

Deterministic Matching

Deterministic matching uses exact identifiers, such as an email address, phone number, or account login to accurately recognize a shopper. For example, if a shopper enters their email into a form or redeems an offer via SMS, this approach can confidently link the shopper’s visits across sessions. The tradeoff is that deterministic matching relies on data a shopper willingly provides.

Probabilistic Matching

Probabilistic matching relies on signals that suggest, rather than confirm, a shopper’s identity. These signals can include an IP address, device type, browser settings, or behavioral patterns. For example, a mobile session and a desktop session from the same IP address, both looking at the same men’s size 10 shoes, can be linked with a high probability as the same shopper. The tradeoff is that probabilistic matching relies on likelihood rather than certainty.

Turning Anonymous Visitor Identification Into Personalized Customer Experiences

Recognizing anonymous visitors is just the starting point. The real impact of identity resolution comes when anonymous visitors receive unified experiences that feel relevant and connected across every touchpoint. 

Here are three ways your brand can use shopper data to deliver personalized experiences that increase engagement and conversions.

Capture Customer Identifiers in Real Time

Even small signals, like an email address typed into a form, can connect future sessions back to the same shopper. Capturing identifiers early builds the foundation for more accurate recognition and stronger customer journey personalization.

• Leverage pre-submit data: Collect contact details as soon as they’re typed, even if the form isn’t submitted.
• Expand remarketing reach: Use early identifiers to reconnect with shoppers who might otherwise stay anonymous.
• Build richer shopper profiles: Combine captured details with behavioral data, such as pages viewed or items added to cart, for a more complete view.

Upsellit applies this strategy through its PreCapture technology, which captures email addresses in real time the moment they’re typed. This first-party data allows brands to recognize visitors sooner to reengage them with relevant remarketing messages.

Recognize Anonymous Visitors with Cross-Device Mapping

A single shopper might browse on mobile, revisit on desktop, and later checkout on a tablet. Without cross-device mapping, these sessions could appear unrelated instead of part of a singular journey.

• Track continuity: Recognize when a shopper has different sessions across various devices.
• Preserve carts and preferences: Ensure saved items carry over, regardless of which device the shopper returns on.
• Maintain consistency: Suppress irrelevant promotions, like abandoned cart reminders after a purchase has already been made.

Upsellit supports this strategy with a combination of first-party cookies and digital

fingerprints to recognize anonymous shoppers with over 90% accuracy. To further ensure continuity, Upsellit leverages cross-device mapping to create a complete omnichannel remarketing experience for returning visitors.

Create Personalized Customer Experiences

Recognition only matters if it leads to experiences that shoppers actually feel. By connecting identifiers and behavioral insights, brands can deliver seamless, relevant interactions that drive engagement and conversions.

• Segment by intent: Identify high-intent shoppers, such as those with repeat visits or active carts, to trigger campaigns that match their purchase intent.
• Deliver tailored offers: Serve personalized promotions or product recommendations based on each individual shopper’s behavior.

Upsellit supports this strategy by leveraging behavioral data to power strategies like personalized incentives, abandoned cart recovery, and smart product recommendations.

Identity Resolution: The Key to Personalization at Scale

Shoppers expect consistency at every touchpoint. Identity resolution makes this possible by connecting activity across devices and sessions, enabling real-time customer journey personalization while helping brands adapt to a cookieless future.

Upsellit puts this into practice with Anonymous Visitor ID, turning anonymous traffic into opportunities for engagement and conversion. Download our Anonymous Visitor ID Solution Guide to learn how Upsellit helps brands recognize shoppers earlier, unify their journeys, and deliver more personalized customer experiences.