> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://storekit.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Visitor Metrics Explained

> Exact definitions of the Guest activity metrics in storekit: Guests, Total Sessions, Sessions with Order, Conversion Rate and every Conversion Funnel step, and why guests and sessions never match one-to-one.

The **Guest activity** page reports on browsing behaviour on your store. Every number on it comes from one of two things: a **session** (a visit) or an **anonymous ID** (a browser). Knowing which one a tile counts explains almost every question merchants ask about these figures.

## Where to find it

In the sidebar, click **Analytics**, then select **Marketing**. The page is titled **Guest activity** and is marked **Beta**.

Use the store selector to pick a single store, or leave it on **All stores**. The period selector at the top right sets the date range for every tile and chart on the page; the default is **Last 30 days**.

<Note>
  Every metric on this page is filtered by **when the session started**, not by when each individual click happened. A visit that starts at 23:50 and ends at 00:10 belongs entirely to the first day.
</Note>

## The two things storekit counts

| Term         | What it is                                                                                                                 |
| ------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Anonymous ID | An identifier storekit stores in the browser of anyone who opens your store. One browser on one device = one anonymous ID. |
| Session      | One visit: a run of activity from the same anonymous ID with no gap of more than 30 minutes.                               |

A session ends and a new one begins when any of the following happens:

* More than **30 minutes** pass between two actions by the same browser
* It is the first activity ever recorded for that browser
* The browser moves to a different store
* The browser moves to a different account

Nothing else splits a session — the browser being closed, the page being refreshed, or the customer walking away for ten minutes all stay within the same session.

<Warning>
  These numbers come from browser tracking, exactly as the note on the page says: visitors using ad blockers or private browsing may not be recorded at all. Treat the page as a behavioural trend, not as an audited count, and reconcile revenue against your [Sales Reports](/docs/guides/reports/sales-reports) instead.
</Warning>

## Metric definitions

### Guests / Unique Guests

Shown as the **Guests** line on the **Guest Trends** chart, as **Unique Guests** on the **Traffic Sources** chart, and as the `guests` column of **Source Breakdown**.

* **Counts:** the number of *different anonymous IDs* seen in sessions that started in the selected date range.
* **Does not mean:** the number of people, customers or accounts. One person using a phone and a laptop counts as two guests. One person clearing cookies, switching browser, or opening your store in private browsing counts again. Conversely, a shared tablet used by ten customers counts as one guest. There is no de-duplication by name, email or logged-in customer anywhere on this page.

### Total Sessions

* **Counts:** the number of *sessions* that started in the selected date range.
* **Does not mean:** the number of guests, page views or orders. One guest can produce any number of sessions.

### Sessions with Order

* **Counts:** the number of *sessions* in which at least one order was completed.
* **Does not mean:** the number of orders. A session in which someone places two orders counts once. It also does not match your order reports exactly, because orders placed by a browser whose activity was not tracked cannot be attributed to a session.

### Conversion Rate

* **Counts:** **Sessions with Order** divided by **Total Sessions**, shown as a percentage.
* **Does not mean:** the share of *people* who ordered. Because a single guest can browse several times before ordering, extra visits push this percentage down even when every one of those guests eventually orders.

### Total Order Value

* **Counts:** the value of orders completed in the sessions counted above, for the selected date range.
* **Does not mean:** your revenue for the period. Use the [Sales Reports](/docs/guides/reports/sales-reports) for revenue — untracked browsers are missing here, and the figure is attributed by session start.

## Conversion Funnel

**Every step of the Conversion Funnel is a number of sessions, never a number of people or events.** The tooltip on each bar says `sessions` for this reason. So "4 sessions made it to checkout" means: in four visits, someone reached the checkout page — possibly four different browsers, possibly the same browser four times.

The steps are, in order:

| Step                | A session is counted when it…                      |
| ------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- |
| **Menu Loaded**     | loaded the ordering menu (the `menu_loaded` event) |
| **Viewed Product**  | opened a product                                   |
| **Added to Cart**   | added an item to the basket                        |
| **Checkout**        | reached a checkout page                            |
| **Order Completed** | completed an order                                 |

<Note>
  The funnel is cumulative, not a set of independent event counts. A session that reaches a later step is counted in every earlier step too, even if the earlier event was never recorded — a session that completes an order is included in **Menu Loaded**, **Viewed Product**, **Added to Cart** and **Checkout** as well. That is why each step is always smaller than or equal to the one above it, and why the drop percentages read as a genuine funnel.
</Note>

Each step is also *not* a count of actions: a session that adds six items to the basket is counted once in **Added to Cart**.

## Why guests and sessions do not line up

This is the most common question about the page, and the answer is simply that the two tiles count different things.

If you see **16 guests** and **17 sessions**, then 16 different browsers produced 17 visits between them — one browser came back after a gap of more than 30 minutes (or switched store), and everything else visited once.

Loading your own store five times in a row does **not** produce five sessions or five guests:

* All five loads come from the same browser, so they are **one guest**.
* If they happen within 30 minutes of each other, they are also **one session** — refreshing, navigating and reopening the tab do not start a new one. Leave it more than 30 minutes and the next load starts a second session, still for the same guest.

So sessions are normally *higher* than guests, and the gap between them is a measure of how often browsers return — not an inconsistency.

<Warning>
  **Your own visits are counted.** storekit does not exclude staff, owners or test visits from **Guest activity**, and there is no setting in the dashboard to filter them out. Your device is one guest, and each of your browsing sessions is one session — including any test orders you complete, which land in **Sessions with Order** and lift **Conversion Rate**. The only reason your own visits might be missing is the tracking limitation above: an ad blocker or private browsing window.
</Warning>

## Related

* [Event Tracking](/docs/privacy-security/event-tracking) — the behavioural events these metrics are built from, including `menu_loaded`
* [Reports Overview](/docs/guides/reports/overview) — revenue and accounting reporting, which is measured from orders rather than browser tracking


## Related topics

- [Event Tracking](/docs/privacy-security/event-tracking.md)
- [Create menu stories with video content and CTAs](/docs/guides/marketing/stories.md)
- [Sales reports: revenue, products, and order trends](/docs/guides/reports/sales-reports.md)
- [Stampede](/docs/guides/integrations/marketing/stampede.md)
- [Acteol](/docs/guides/integrations/marketing/acteol.md)