Visitors Vs. Sessions in Shopify and Why the Difference Matters

Learn here what visitors vs. sessions in Shopify means and why the difference matters.

What makes a business successful? If you’re like many Shopify store owners, you might think the answer is, “Making tons of sales!” But selling products is the result, not the cause.

The real secret to long-term success is less obvious: figuring out what makes your customers tick. To discover that, you need to know how to use metrics like visitors and sessions on Shopify.

Are Visitors and Sessions the Same Thing on Shopify Analytics?

Analytics are statistics that give you information about your store. Every time someone visits your website, Shopify tracks their activity. Visitors and sessions are two common metrics for keeping tabs on your web traffic. These two pieces of data are linked, but they’re not the same thing.

What Are Store Visitors?

Knowing the difference between visitors vs. sessions in Shopify can help you understand how people shop on your site.

Each person who visits your store adds a number to the visitor metric. Some people find you with Google Search and others click on one of your social media ads. If you use coupons and email marketing, some clients come directly from your promotion to the cart page. All of these clicks are visitors.

How does Shopify know who’s who? Site tools automatically assign cookies to new devices, tiny tags that let you know when someone returns to your store. Every PC, laptop, smartphone, tablet, and other electronic gadget gets a unique identifier.

Shopify reports can display your total store visitors by time frame:

  • Day
  • Week
  • Month
  • Custom date or time range

This feature lets you compare how many people visited your site in April 2025 compared to the same month last year. Or you can see how many visits you had during your Black Friday sale.

What Are Sessions on Shopify?

A session starts when someone lands on your website. “Hang on,” you’re probably thinking, “isn’t that the same as a visitor?” Not quite.

In Shopify, sessions are active until the person leaves your store. They expire after 30 minutes of inactivity or at midnight, whichever comes first.

This means that a single visitor can have many sessions. People tend to take a while when deciding whether to purchase a big-ticket item. If the potential customer spends 10 minutes browsing in the morning and comes back again at night, Shopify tracks two different sessions.

Types of Sessions in Shopify

You can track three main session metrics in Shopify Analytics. Each type offers a distinct point of view:

  • Sessions over time: Shows session statistics from the selected date range and lets you compare the results with a second date range
  • Sessions by location: Groups sessions by country
  • Sessions by referrer: Organizes sessions by traffic source, such as Google Search clicks, Facebook, Google Ads, other websites, etc.

Don’t forget that every time you visit your store also counts as a session unless you do it from inside the Shopify admin.

What’s an Example of Visitors Vs. Sessions?

To help you understand what sessions are in Shopify, we put together a little chart:

Visitor A (Jane)Visitor B (Nancy)Visitor C (Bruce)
Friday MorningSpends one hour browsing for a summer dressLooks for an anniversary gift for wife during two hours
Friday AfternoonCompares her three favorite summer dressesChecks out your new summer inventory, but doesn’t buy anything
Friday EveningChooses two dresses and makes the purchaseAdds a few items to cart but doesn’t purchase yet

In this example, your store had three unique visitors on Friday. The total number of sessions was six; Jane visited three times, Nancy once, and Bruce twice.

Where Do You Find Visitors, Sessions, and Other Shopify Analytics?

In the past, only clients with a higher subscription tier could create in-depth reports with Shopify Analytics. These days, all Shopify plans (Basic, Shopify, Advanced, and Plus) provide access to these helpful store management tools. Follow these steps to find reports for sessions and visitors on Shopify:

  • In the Shopify admin, click on the “Analytics” tab.
  • Choose “Reports.”
  • Click on the filter marked “Category” and select “Acquisition” from the list.
  • To compare visitors vs. sessions in the Shopify dashboard, select the “Visitors over time” and “Sessions over time” categories.

Shopify also lets you create a customized metrics dashboard with other statistics. This dashboard appears by default when you open the “Analytics” page. Adding or removing individual metrics is a breeze:

  • To remove a metric, or data card, click the “X” next to the statistic.
  • To add a data card, look for the statistic you want on the side of the screen, then click on it.
  • You can also drop data cards directly from the sidebar.

Don’t forget to click “Save” when you’re done customizing the Shopify Analytics dashboard.

What Can You Learn From Comparing Visitors Vs. Sessions in Shopify?

There are a few important things you can learn when comparing visitors vs. sessions in Shopify that can teach you what your customers need.

Reviewing the data on sessions and visitors for your Shopify store can teach you valuable lessons about your customers and help you identify potential issues with your store.

Many Sessions Per Visitor

It’s normal for sessions to be higher than visitors, but an excessive number usually indicates problems. If you have 50 sessions and just 10 visitors, it might mean:

  • Your ads are attracting the wrong type of visitor.
  • Your product pages need extra “wow factor” (images, videos, etc.) to convince shoppers.
  • Potential customers can’t find the information they need (e.g., accurate size charts).
  • Prices are too high for your target audience.

For more detailed insights, it’s helpful to compare session metrics with conversion rate information. In e-commerce, the average conversion rate is roughly 2%, so you would expect to have about two sales per 100 sessions.

Nearly Equal Sessions and Visitors

Having sessions and visitors match isn’t ideal either. It would mean people aren’t returning to your store. To correct this problem, you need a “hook,” something to keep potential customers and past buyers thinking about your products.  Discounts, sales, reward points, and other incentives are a few solutions.

How Can You Improve the Shopping Experience for Every Visitor and Session?

Knowing the difference between visitors vs. sessions in Shopify can make shopping in your store a good experience for your customers.

The more practice you get with Shopify Analytics, the better. Website metrics give you hints about what visitors think of your store experience.

At StayTuned Digital, we can help you find app solutions for any issues you have with visitors and sessions on Shopify. Discover easy-to-use tools for bundles, bulk pricing, rewards, size charts, and more.

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