What is the difference between a visit and a session?

This article goes over the differences between a visit and a session.

Session

• A session is a metric that is found on Google Analytics. 
• A session is a group of website interactions within a given timeframe
• A session ends when a user has 30 minutes of inactivity or ends at midnight
• It can also end if a user arrives at one campaign, leaves, and enters the website from a different campaign

Visit

• A visit is a metric found on the Orbee Platform. 
• A visit is a group of website interactions that starts when a user enters the website and ends when the user leaves the website
  • If a visitor enters the website, leaves, and enters again, it will count as a separate visit (two total)
• A visit does not have an expiration time and also includes inactivity. 
  • If a visitor enters the website and is inactive, but comes back, it will still be considered as one visit. 
• Multiple tabs count as multiple visits
• We have backoff pinging every 10 seconds to the user to check for inactivity
  • The frequency will increase to up to every 5 minutes until the user becomes active again, of which it will return to checking for inactivity for every ten seconds. For example, if a user is inactive for 20 minutes, we will check their inactivity not as often as every 10 seconds due to the bandwidth

Differences

A session is based on inactivity for 30 minutes or if a user enters from a different campaign, but a visit is determined every time a user enters the website. 

You will need to understand that there will always be a discrepancy between these two metrics from Google Analytics and the Orbee Platform because of the different ways that Google and Orbee track the users' activity. 

Last Updated: June 12, 2020 10:06 AM