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Convertize and Google Analytics have different tracking methods. This means that you can find discrepancies in data between Google Analytics and Convertize.
Convertize looks only at unique visitors. For each visitor that enters your experiment, Convertize creates a cookie to make sure that returning visitors are not counted again. The cookie remains active for a maximum of 100 days. This can be less if visitors regularly clear their cookies or if their browsers restrict the length of time that cookies can be set on their browsers.
A new visitor is counted as part of your experiment if they have seen at least one of the pages included in your experiment’s URL targeting. If your experiment runs on multiple pages of your website, visitors who see more than 1 page on your site, are still counted only once.
Sessions: A session includes visits to a site and the pages loaded in a specific period. This means that a single visitor can trigger multiple visits within one session. A single users can also trigger multiple sessions. A session ends after a user shows no activity for 30 minutes, meaning that if they continue browsing your website after a 1 hour lunch break, they start a new session.
Page views: A page view is counted each time a visitor loads and views a particular page. The page view count includes every time a page is loaded, including reloads by the same visitor.
Unique page views: A unique page view is counted each time a page is visited by a user who has not visited that page before. Page reloads are not included. If one user visits multiple pages, a unique page view is counted for each page they visit. Unique page views are session based, meaning that when a visitor starts a new session, a visit to a page they visited in a previous session, is counted again.
Users: Users are the GA metric that are closest to Convertize’s unique visitors metric. When comparing visitors between GA and Convertize, make sure to look at users in your GA reports. Small variations in visitor counts are normal, because Convertize and Google Analytics define ‘unique visitors’ and ‘users’ slightly differently.
Convertize tracks unique visitors only. Google Analytics tracks session-based metrics, such as page views and unique page views.
You need to make sure that you are looking at the pages you are looking at in GA match the URL targeting you set for your experiment. For example, if your experiment only runs on one page, but you are looking at the site wide visitor count in GA, you will see different numbers.
For example, if you have set the audience targeting of your Convertize experiment to mobile devices only, but you are targeting all devices in GA, you can expect to see a significant difference in visitor count.
When looking at a certain date range, Convertize only shows you new visitors who first entered your experiment in that date range. GA displays both new and returning visitors, which are called ‘users’ in GA, on the dates selected.
For example, if a user visits a page on 20th April, the visitor is tracked as unique for that day in GA and Convertize. If the same user visits the site again on 21th April, Convertize does not count them as a unique visitor. GA, on the other hand, will record the visitor as unique again on 21th April.
So, if the date selected is 20th April, both Convertize and GA track one unique visitor. If the date selected is 21th April, you will see no unique visitors in Convertize, while GA will display it as one unique visitor (user). If you select a date range of 20th – 21th April, you will see one unique visitor in both Convertize and GA.
If you are looking at reports on daily visitors that run in different time zones, you may see different daily visitor counts. Convertize reports follow UTC. GA reports are based on the time-zone you selected when you created the account. Make sure to set this to UTC.
Convertize reports provide real time data. You can view your test reports instantly in real time. Google Analytics reports take 24-48 hours to update.
Convertize filters out visits by bots, such as Google Crawler Bot. Make sure to switch your bot filter on in your GA Admin panel.
In a split URL test, the original page loads in the browser before the visitor is redirected to the variation. Even before the redirection takes place, GA code begins to execute on the control page itself. This could trigger a page view on the original in GA.
In a scenario where GA code is activated before the Convertize Pixel in a split URL test, anyone going to the variation is counted for the original’s page views as well. As a result, you’ll see that the page views for your original are almost the double of your variation in a split URL test.
Convertize does not include users in the experiment that have javascript or cookies disabled on their browsers.
If you have similar visitor counts but different conversion counts in your experiment, you’ll want to take a closer look at the way you track goals in Convertize and events in Google Analytics. A similarly named goal or event aren’t necessarily tracking the exact same action taken by visitors.
For example, you may have a “signup completed” event tracking a form submission. In Convertize, you may have this configured as a “submit button” click goal or a “confirmation page” page-view goal. Each of these goals represents the same thing (the user submitted the form), but they are not tracking the same action, which can lead to a discrepancy. The user may have clicked the submit button without filling out the form, or maybe the user submitted the form by pressing “enter”, bypassing the button click event.
Make sure your events track the same things the same way. If they don’t, you will have dissimilar data.