Question

If an anonymous user on a site returns multiple times in a certain period (lets say three times a week), then I need to suggest the user to log in/register on the site.

I was thinking about keeping this info in a cookie, but is there a better way of doing this? Or maybe a standardized way build in .NET or in a third party library?

Answer 1

For anonymous user the only way is the cookie.

You place an encrypted ID to the cookie and connect that id with your anonymous user on the database.

Google set up advertising cookies to last for 30 days for example

http://www.google.com/privacy/ads/

Google analytic set up up to 2 years

http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/concepts/gaConceptsCookies.html

Google Analytics sets an expiration date of 2 years for unique visitor
tracking. However, if your visitors delete their cookies and revisit
your site, then Google Analytics will set new cookies (including new
unique visitor cookies) for those visitors. While you can configure
the duration of a user session cookie (from the default 30 minutes)
using the _setSessionCookieTimeout() method, you cannot configure the
duration of the unique visitor cookie.