Sessions vs Visits

Sessions and visits are often used interchangeably in web analytics, but they have distinct characteristics. A session typically refers to a group of user interactions with your website within a specific time frame, usually ending after 30 minutes of inactivity, whereas a visit traditionally represents a single instance of a user coming to your website. Sessions are more commonly used in modern analytics platforms like Google Analytics and capture multiple page views, events, and interactions within one active period, while measuring unique behaviours. Visits, on the other hand, are a somewhat older metric that simply counts each time someone accesses your site, regardless of what they do once there.

When analysing the effectiveness of a content marketing campaign, sessions would be the preferred metric as they provide deeper insights into user engagement and behaviour. For example, if you're evaluating how users navigate through your blog content, sessions would show you not only how many times users accessed your site but also how they moved between articles, how long they stayed, and what actions they took before leaving—giving you a more comprehensive understanding of content performance. Visits would merely tell you how many times your site was accessed, which might be sufficient for basic traffic reporting but lacks the contextual information needed for optimisation decisions.

Sessions

Website Visits

What is it?

A Session, also known as a Website Visit, represents a group of user interactions with your website that occur within a given timeframe. Google Analytics defines a session as a period of continuous user engagement that begins when a user arrives on your site and ends when they leave or after 30 minutes of inactivity. Each session can contain multiple activities including page views, events, downloads, form submissions, and e-commerce transactions. Sessions are fundamental to understanding user behaviour patterns and website performance, as they capture the complete journey a user takes during a single visit to your site.

Website Visits, also referred to as sessions, track the number of times users interact with your website during distinct periods of engagement. Each visit, or session, represents a continuous interaction that begins when a user arrives and ends after 30 minutes of inactivity or when they leave the site.

Who is it for?

Marketing Manager

Marketing Automation Specialist

Marketing Manager

SEO Specialist

Digital Marketing Manager

Chief Marketing Officer

Formula

ƒ Count(Sessions)

ƒ Count(Website Visits)

Example

Sessions are automatically calculated by your analytics platform based on user activity patterns. For instance, if a small-scale online furniture retailer experiences 5,000 sessions during their end-of-year sale week and 4,500 sessions the following week, their total Sessions count for the two-week period would be 9,500. This means 9,500 distinct visits occurred to their website, regardless of whether some users visited multiple times or if multiple users visited once each.

Let's say you're running a campaign for a new product launch: Day 1: 1,000 users visit your site, generating 1,200 visits/sessions (some users returned within the day after timeout periods) Day 2: 800 users visit, generating 950 visits/sessions Day 3: 1,200 users visit, generating 1,400 visits/sessions Your total visits for the three-day period would be 3,550, even though your unique users/visitors might only total 2,500 (accounting for overlap between days). This difference shows you the level of repeat engagement your campaign is driving—the same people are coming back multiple times.