For our chosen model, need individual user session info e.g. need a userId

library(googleAnalyticsR)
ga_auth()
gaId <- xxxx # Your View ID

## In this case, dimension3 contains userId in format:
## u={cid}&t={hit-timestamp}
raw <- google_analytics(gaId,
                        start = "2016-02-01",
                        end = "2016-02-01",
                        metrics = c("pageviews"),
                        dimensions = c("dimension3", "pagePath"))

For Adobe Analytics use the RSiteCatalyst library.

Group per user the pages they visited in order of timestamp

library(tidyr); library(dplyr)

## put dimension3: u={cid}&t={timestamp} in own columns "cid" and "timestamp"
processed <- raw %>% extract(col = dimension3, 
                             into = c("cid","timestamp"),
                             regex = "u=(.+)&t=(.+)")
## javascript to R timestamp
processed$timestamp <- as.POSIXct(as.numeric(processed$timestamp) / 1000, 
                                  origin = "1970-01-01")

## find users with session length > 1 e.g. not a bounce visits
nonbounce <- processed %>% group_by(cid) %>% 
  summarise(session_length = n()) %>% filter(session_length > 1)
processed <- nonbounce %>% left_join(processed)

Our model library clickstream needs a vector of sequential pageviews per userId. You may also need to aggregate the pages - unique for each website so not included here.

## for each cid, make a string of pagePath in timestamp order
sequence <- processed %>% group_by(cid) %>% 
  summarise(sequence = paste(pagePath, collapse = ","))

sequence <- paste(sequence$cid, sequence$sequence, sep=",")

## example entries of page sequence per user for clickstream
example_sequence[[1]]

## [1] "100116318.1454322382,/example/809,/example/1212,/example/339,/example/1494,/example/339,/example/1703,/example/1703,/example/1722,/example/1703"

Create a Markov chain model of first order

library(clickstream)

# fitting a simple Markov chain and predicting the next click
csf <- tempfile()
writeLines(sequence, csf)
cls <- readClickstreams(csf, header = TRUE)

## 1612 users - computing time: 285 seconds
model <- fitMarkovChain(cls, verbose=TRUE)

## save model for use on OpenCPU
save(model, file="./data/model.rda")

Almost instant predictions now we have built the model object.

## see ?clickstream for details

## make predictions
> predict(model, 
          new("Pattern", 
              sequence = c("/example/96","/example/213","/example/107")))

## prediction output
Sequence: /example/251
Probability: 0.5657379
Absorbing Probabilities: 
  None
1    0

OpenCPU allows webhooks to Github: updates the model everytime you push to Github!

Create a small custom package with the model data and the function to predict pageviews

predictMarkov <- function(pageview_names) {
  ## model loaded on package load
  states <- invisible(clickstream::states(model))
  pv_n <- pageview_names[pageview_names %in% states]
  startPattern <- new("Pattern", sequence = pv_n)
  predict <- predict(model, startPattern)
  
  list(page = predict@sequence,
       probability = predict@probability)
}

Test your OpenCPU calls here: https://public.opencpu.org/ocpu/test/

Hopefully you can think of something better than a popup…

• Add business logic to model:
  • Should the model predict where users go if its a bad user path?
• Would real-time data make the predictions better?
• Use your own server for OpenCPU (or look at Domino data labs / yHat paid services)
• Content recommendation just one example of this infrastructure - what else?