Session meaning how to#

If a user clicks your site and views five pages → they’ll have five pageviews in one session Because of that, one session can result in several pageviews. Google Analytics pageviews are the individual URLs that load when a user visits your site-regardless of their session. If you’re still with us at this point, let’s clear up the difference between sessions and pageviews-which often get confused.

What’s the difference between sessions and pageviews in GA? In other words: one user could have multiple sessions but you can’t have more users than sessions, since every user starts a session the first time they visit your site. At that point, you’d be one user who has done two sessions. If you return to the website later on the same day, from the same device and browser, GA will recognize you as a returning user: if you spend another few minutes on the website, check through a few pages, and leave, you’d have completed another session. If you spend 5 minutes on the website, check through a few pages, then leave, you’ve just completed your first session When you land on a website for the first time, a GA cookie is set with a unique identifier that recognizes you as a new user For example, if you log in from two devices, it will show two users-even if you’re the same person.

Google stopped using the term ‘unique visitors' because. (This term isn’t as perfect as it sounds. In Google Analytics, ‘sessions’ refers to the number of individual sessions initiated by all the users of your website, and ‘users’ refers to the number of unique visitors to it. What’s the difference between sessions and users in GA? The session duration reaches a time limit: a session ends by default after 30 minutes of inactivity by the user (aka a 'timeout') or when the day ends at midnightĪ user changes campaigns: for example, if someone arrives on your site through a Facebook campaign, leaves, then returns later through organic search, those will be classed as two different sessionsĪ note about time limits: if the 30-minute default doesn’t work for you, you can customize the length of a session by heading to Admin > Tracking Info > Session Settings: But when does it end? Typically, it’s when: How long is a session in Google Analytics?Ī new session starts when a visitor lands on your page.

Session meaning how to#

If that was your case, you could start thinking about how to increase the chances of a user adding something to their cart-for example through upsells, internal links to product pages, or product recommendations in the sidebar. The example above shows that people tend to exit their session if they don’t add products to cart.