How to track who viewed your presentation
Know whether the deck was opened, on what, and how far they got. Keynote cannot tell you any of that; a hosted link can tell you most of it, and an email gate can put a name on it. Here is exactly what is recorded and what is not.
What Keynote, iCloud, PDF and email tell you
Nothing. A .key attachment, a PDF or a movie export leaves your outbox and goes silent. Keynote's iCloud sharing shows you who you invited and who is editing, not who opened it or which slide they stopped on. Read receipts in mail are opt-in on the recipient's side and say nothing about the deck.
What a hosted link records
When someone opens a Linkdeck link, one view is recorded for that session with:
- When it was opened, and whether it was the first open of the deck.
- Country, taken from the request, and device type (phone, tablet, desktop).
- The referrer, so you can tell a click from your email apart from one from LinkedIn.
- A hashed IP, used only to count unique viewers. The address itself is not stored.
Per-slide time: the number that matters
Total views tell you the link worked. Per-slide time tells you what happened next. The viewer reports how long each slide was on screen, and the analytics page shows the average seconds per slide and how many sessions reached it. A pricing slide that averages four seconds and a case-study slide that averages forty are two different conversations to have on the follow-up call.
Email gate: names instead of counts
Turn on the email gate in the deck's settings and the viewer must enter an email address before the deck plays. You then see the address, first and last open, and how many times that person returned. It works with a password at the same time, and it is the only way to attach a name to a view; without it, views are anonymous by design.
You can also have Linkdeck email you the first time a deck is opened, per deck, from the analytics page.
Privacy: what we hash and why
IP addresses are hashed with SHA-256 before anything is written, which is enough to tell one viewer from another and not enough to identify them. Viewers do not create accounts. The email gate is explicit: the person sees the prompt and chooses to type an address. If you collect emails from clients, mention it in your own privacy notice as you would for any form on your site.
Setting it up
- Export the deck: File → Export To → HTML…, then zip the folder.
- Upload it, and open the deck in your dashboard.
- Optional: turn on the email gate, a password, or first-view notification.
- Send the link. Open the analytics page after the meeting.
Questions
Can I see names without an email gate?
No. Without a gate you get anonymous views: time, country, device, referrer and per-slide time. Names only come from the gate, where the viewer types their own address.
Is per-slide time exact?
It is the time the slide was on screen in that session, reported by the viewer and shown as an average in seconds across sessions. A tab left open in the background inflates the last slide; treat the numbers as a shape, not a stopwatch.
Is this on the free plan?
Analytics, the email gate and first-view notifications are Pro features (€12 a month). The free plan hosts one deck for 3 days without view data.
Upload, send, and check the analytics tab tomorrow
Views, devices, per-slide time and leads are on Pro. The first deck is free to try.